Serving Midwest Aviation Since 1960
Serving Midwest Aviation Since 1960
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You'd think there would be apple trees growing around Appleton, but that's not the case. One of the founders of Appleton, Minnesota was Addison Phelps from Appleton, Wisconsin and brought the name with him. There are no apple orchards in Wisconsin's city either which was named for Samuel Appleton who apparently never went west of the Hudson River, but his son-in-law was Amos Lawerence who founded Lawerence University in Appleton with financial assistance from the father-in-law. Appleton, Minneso...
Nine hours thirty-one minutes is one of the longest non-stop flights I ever made as a pilot. It also might have been my most lucrative day in aviation. My Air Force squadron flew C-130s from Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage to supply radar stations along the Arctic circle. A permanent detachment with at least two aircraft and crews was based at Sondrestrom Air Base on the west coast of Greenland. One crew "rotated" every week. Starting from Sondrestrom and ending at Elmendorf, this...
New Richmond Regional Airport has 268 based aircraft housed in 119 hangars making it number one in Wisconsin for both categories. For perspective, 210 aircraft are based at the airport in second place. Nine of New Richmond’s aircraft are jets that make good use of the 5500-foot-long primary runway. It has a full parallel taxiway for better ground operations. The secondary runway is turf, there’s a helipad and seaplane base. Aviation gas and jet fuel are available as self-service or del...
Closed course air racing in the 1920s and 1930s was dominated by airplanes built specifically as racers. Charles Willis (Speed) Holman won the 1930 Thompson Trophy flying the Laird Solution, so called because it was the "solution" to the Travel Air Mystery Ship that won the 1929 race. Travel Air supposedly built the Mystery Ship in complete secrecy. In 1932, Jimmy Doolittle won the Thompson Trophy flying the notorious Bee Gee R-1. Doolittle later set a speed record for a land plane, 296 mph....
Well, it was night and overcast clouds made it dark. There was some rain around and widely scattered thunderstorms, but it was a good night for flying. Our airplane was equipped with weather radar and a strike finder taking the unknown out of the situation. If you don't remember the days before the miracle of satellite weather, a strike finder detected lightning and could do that all around the aircraft, unlike radar which could only see ahead. My colleague and I had been to a meeting at an airp...
La Pointe was a trading post established by the French in 1693 on an island in Lake Superior. In the late 18th century, the American Fur Company took over and appointed Michel Cadotte the manager. Mr. Cadotte was married to the daughter of an Ojibwa leader. The chief's name was White Crane and the daughter Madeleine. Mrs. Cadotte most likely had an Ojibwa name, but the location of La Pointe became known as Madeline Island. Madeline or Madeleine is a French name derived from the Greek Magdalene....
Before the "unified designation system" for aircraft was introduced, the United States Navy used its own alpha-numeric method. Sometimes this resulted in a popular, unofficial nickname. Two airplanes that got renamed that way were the Skyray and the Tracker. In plain view, the Skyray resembled fish belonging to the "Ray" order (Stingray, etc) and was a real hot rod. A jet fighter with an afterburner, the Skyray was the first supersonic carrier-based fighter and held several speed and time to cli...
Seven miles from end to end, Park Point in Duluth is the world's longest freshwater sand bar. In 1871 a ship channel was excavated on the northwest end making Park Point an island, after which ferry service was used for access. A gondola that carried goods and people across the channel replaced the ferry then the famous lift bridge was opened in 1930. The Duluth lift bridge is the world's fastest, being able to rise the required 138 feet in just 55 seconds. At the other end of the sand bar, the...
For 30 years I was part of a flying club called "Ascension Flyers" so named because the founders all belonged to Ascension Episcopal Church in Stillwater. The club was based at Lake Elmo and our aircraft was a 1958 Champion 7EC. My favorite thing to do with the Champ was fly to the Redwing Regional Airport. Occasionally I flew there for business, but usually it was just for fun. Robert Gaylord Seifert was part of the fun. Rob was the Redwing Airport Manager for many years. He was also a...
In October of 2024 a chartered Beech King Air stopped at the Piney-Pinecreek Airport for customs. A group of duck hunters were going to Portage La Prairie, Manitoba so Piney-Pinecreek was convenient. Easy access to both Canadian and U.S. customs was the intention when the place was upgraded in 1993 to a paved and lighted all-weather facility. In any case, the King Air Pilot had his own reasons to visit. In June 1993 Jim Groebner hitched up his camping trailer and headed to Pinecreek for the...
At the Federal Aviation Administration, they have a long term love affair with acronyms. TORA is not the shortened version of a movie about the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, nor is TODA a slightly dyslexic attempt at the same thing. The two are FAA acronyms which along with LDA define useable runway lengths. They mean "Take Off Runway Available," "Take Off Distance Available," and "Landing Distance Available." On a normal (fully useable) runway the numbers are all the same, but if there are...
Two remarkable women from Minnesota scored historical firsts in aviation. Amanda Lee grew up in Mounds View. In 2022 she became the first female to fly for the United States Navy's Demonstration Squadron, aka "The Blue Angels." Almost a century earlier, Florence Klingensmith from Moorhead was the first of her gender to fly in the National Air Races. Besides being pilots, there's a lot of similarities between the two. Neither had aviation as their first career choice. Maintaining airplanes led...
"Han-gaerd" is a Dutch word meaning an enclosure near a house and was derived from the Latin "hanghart" (a place to shoe horses). The French morphed that into "hangar" meaning "shed." Etymology might be fascinating, but early in aviation history a hangar became a place to store aircraft and that is what it means now in either English or French. In 1903 the Wright Brothers stored their aircraft in what was definitely a shed that they built at Kitty Hawk. It was 16 feet wide and 44 feet long with...
In a remarkable bit of foresight, the Minnesota Legislature created the "Metropolitan Airports Commission" on July 6, 1943. The agency's mandate was to own and operate airports within 35 miles of the Minneapolis and St. Paul downtowns, thus creating a regional system of airports with a common purpose. "Wold-Chamberlain Field" became the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport and "Holman Field" the St. Paul Downtown Airport. Anoka County/Blaine, Crystal, Flying Cloud, and Lake Elmo Airports...
Bill Powell was born in Alabama in 1804. His ancestors included Africans, Creeks, Muscogee, and Scots. His Creek mother called him Asi-yahola. When advancing "settlement" forced the Creeks and Muscogee to leave Alabama, Asi-yahola's family joined the Seminoles in Florida which was a Spanish colony until 1819. In the 1830s the United States government tried to move the Seminoles to the "Indian Territory," but led by Asi-yahola they resisted. He was treacherously captured during a peace...
Among the aficionados of the war bird genre, the Beech Mentor is a popular airplane. Officially the T-34, the Mentor was used by both the US Air Force and Navy as a primary trainer. It was derived from the ubiquitous Bonanza, is easy to fly, and good at aerobatics. What could be better for pilot training? Walter Beech developed the T-34 as a private venture thinking the military would like an economical replacement for the North American T-6/SNJ then in use. As usual, Beech was spot on and sold...
South St. Paul Municipal Airport is busy! It's a reliever for Minneapolis/St. Paul International and home to over 220 aircraft. A bunch of successful aviation businesses are based there including Wipaire, the world's premier manufacturer of aircraft floats who are also well known for aircraft modifications and avionics. Another notable tenant is the Commemorative Air Force (CAF) with a fleet of vintage aircraft dating back to the second World War. There's only one runway at South St. Paul and...
Jim Groebner flies what is surely one of the fastest and certainly the sexiest civilian aircraft ever built. Lear Jet is the airplane and Jim is the captain. His current ride is the Lear 45XR. That's definitely pretty cool. Bill Lear invented his namesake aircraft, but he sold the type certificate to Bombardier who still call it a Lear Jet. The original Model 23 was a little hot rod. The one Groebner flies is much bigger with nine very spacious passenger seats, a gross weight of 21,500 pounds...
In 1962 John F. Kennedy proclaimed May 15 to be Peace Officer's Memorial Day "in recognition of the service given by the men and women who, night and day, stand guard in our midst to protect us through enforcement of our laws." Each year the week in which the 15th of May falls is National Police Week. There have been 21,183 members of the law enforcement services who have died or been disabled in the line of duty. Their names are inscribed on a wall at the National Law Enforcement Officers...
About 6% of the world's professional pilots are women. Surprisingly India is the country leading the way where slightly over 14% of the pilots are female. Among helicopter pilots the number is just 4%, but in all categories, the number of women in aviation is rising. In 1938 Hannah Reitsch became the first of her gender to fly a helicopter. Ms. Reitsch was a German civilian test pilot who flew the first controllable helicopter, the Focke-Achellis 61. She also flew the Messerschmidt 163 making...
Over the centuries many different types of pavements have been invented by humans to make travel easier and keep things moving regardless of the weather. Beginning around 300 BC the Romans built first-class roads, many of which are still in use. The Empire's engineers designed highways that were crowned for drainage, had curbing, and were often paved with cut rock or cobble stones. Later European civilizations lacked the Roman ingenuity and sometimes used corduroy for paving. Not old pants, but...
Internet shopping is the way to go in the 21st century. Point, click and buy means you never have to leave home to spend your money. The ancestor of "online" stores may have started in 1884 when the railroad station agent in North Redwood Falls found he was stuck with a shipment of watches the local jeweler claimed to have never ordered. Seeing an opportunity, the agent used the U.S. Mail to offer them for sale then shipped them the same way. The "North" city and Redwood Falls merged in 1996,...
Back in the 1930s, the primary radio aid for navigating in airplanes was the "Four Course Range." The way it worked is the station sent out two signals which divided the world into four quadrants. You could tell which of the quadrants you were in by Morse Code for the letters A or N which merged into a solid tone on each of the four courses. Pilots navigated by listening, there were no instruments involved. Sometimes "fan markers" provided information on distance from the station. The system...
Charles Lindbergh was an environmentalist. After his many accomplishments in aviation, he became an enthusiastic steward of the planet. In 1969 the proposed Voyagers National Park had his attention and Mr. Lindbergh traveled to International Falls to see for himself. He called Einarson's Flying Service to rent an aircraft. Francis Einarson took the request and said, "Who is this?" Charles Lindbergh was the reply, to which Einarson said, "Yeah, and I'm Jimmy Doolittle." That got sorted out OK, bu...
