I’m here to tell you about another fly-in. August and September are turning out to be full of tons of aviation events for me to photograph and there’s many more I won’t make due to budget.

Anyhow, WAAAM is an awesome museum that I follow on Facebook and one day their feed mentioned the fly-in at Scappoose, Oregon of the Northwest Antique Airplane Club. So I made plans to go. When I was younger my aviation interest was essentially entirely in military aircraft, but now that I’ve gotten involved in aviation again, I find the antique civilian aircraft equally fascinating.

As we arrived, we found a nice casual atmosphere. It was very nice.

We walked to the end of the flight line on the near side of the runway. There was a Stinson Junior and a Stinson Model O. These were fascinating beautiful planes and you will probably notice, they were among the planes that I spent the most memory card space on.

Then came one of the things that was unusual but sort of charming about this fly-in. Many of the aircraft to see were on the other side of the runway. Getting over there meant walking to a crossing taxiway and having a volunteer escort you across. They had radios so they could monitor what air traffic was coming. The other side also had the best location for photographing landings, take-offs, and taxiing aircraft. We spent a lot of time watching someone train on a gyrocopter and photographing the antique aircraft coming and going. It was another really hot day and heat shimmer did ruin a significant number of my photos. (This is a difficulty in aviation photography that I haven’t found anyway to have a positive impact on the issue.)

In summary, a very exciting day of antique airplanes, but quite hot. Now I’m very excited about the coming fly-in at WAAAM.

Take a closer look at my NWAAC photos.