I spent this Saturday as I spend almost all of my other Saturdays when I’m not travelling – at the CAF SoCal hangers in Camarillo. Today it was grey and gloomy, borderline chilly, despite the fact that at home, thirty miles away, it was sunny and pushing 90°F. That’s what you get when you’re just a couple miles from the coast during “June gloom.”
We were setting up for a wedding in the museum hangar (renting it out for events is a big source of revenue for us) and we had the EAA holding their monthly meeting in our maintenance hangar (we’re building two more hangars, a portion of which they’ll lease from us, but for now we’re sharing) so almost all of the planes were out on the ramp. Also out there were five or six of the small general aviation aircraft belonging to the flight school that leases tie-down space on our ramp.
All in all, gloomy or not, there were a lot of aircraft sitting around. What better time to take a couple of panoramic pictures?
On the west side of the ramp I was between two of the flight school aircraft. Out in the middle, from left to right are one of our SNJ’s (blue with white tail), our PT-19 (blue with yellow wings), our C-46 “China Doll” (the honkin’ big one in the back), our A-2 trainer, our F8F Bearcat (dark blue, hiding behind the P-51), our P-51 Mustang (red nose & tail), and our other SNJ (yellow).
Over on the other side and looking back, from left to right are “China Doll,” one of the flight school planes, the F8F Bearcat, the A-2 in front of the P-51 Mustang and the yellow SNJ, our F6F Hellcat (dark blue with the wings folded back), our Navion trainer (white on top, blue on bottom, yellow stripes), the PT-19, and the blue SNJ. Over behind all of the planes, running from the far hangar out to the taxiway on the right, you can see a chain-link fence covered with green tarps. On the other side is where the grading is going on for our new hangars.
Not the best day for flying, but a good day to get a lot of catch-up work done on the accounting and paperwork. You take what you can get.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 