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GOLDEN AGE Air Museum

Air Classics, Apr 2005 by Auliard, Gilles

This growing museum is preserving vintage aviation

"It became a family joke. When we bought our fourth airplane, my three sisters asked me what we intended doing with those planes. I looked at my father, and we both answered: 'We're going to start a museum!' It was just plain family fun when we started."

Opened since 1997 at Grimes Airport in Bethel, Pennsylvania, the Golden Age Air Museum (GAAM) is the brainchild of Paul Dougherty and his father Paul Sr. and is rapidly becoming one of the main focus points of restoration and exhibition of antique aircraft in the northeastern US. The collections are maintained with a manic sense of detail and the grounds are on par with the best PGA golf course.

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Paul continues: "We had a lot of options for our museum, but setting up a non-profit organization was the way to go. In this case, people are willing to help. We now have the right mix of people, great pilots, aspiring pilots, and ground crews. It costs us a lot of money to keep it going, but it is a lot of fun."

Fun is the word that immediately pops in mind when discussing Grimes. The field still has an innocence lost by other bigger, better-known places with the same function. The buzz is out among pilots.

Walter Grimes, a local businessman, initiated the construction of the airport which officially opened on 21 October 1946, and was intended as a satellite for nearby local airports. Grimes had two grass runways, both 300O×100-ft, one running east/west (still in existence today) and a north/south runway. The airport grew unexpectedly and became home of an FBO offering charter flights, tie downs, fuel, flight instruction and maintenance. Every day for a while, a DC-3 was making the shuttle to New York, carrying crates of chickens that were raised in the numerous chicken coops surrounding the field. Some of these structures still survive today. The airport ran until the 1980s - the traffic slowly coming down to a trickle. At this point in time, the owner intended to close the aiiport and turn it into a racetrack, but neighbors liked things the way they were. They pooled their resources and purchased the airport. To keep it going they had to subdivide and sell some of the lots, but the airport kept on running on a smaller scale, later becoming a skydiving center.

Then the two Pauls entered the picture: "We started looking for a place to harbor our planes when we acquired our fifth machine. We looked around for old and low-use airports. We approached the couple running Grimes in 1995. It was a courtship that lasted over a year. We purchased the land and the buildings in 1996. We tore clown the old hangar, which was a 200-year-old converted barn in sorry shape, as well as the T-hangars. We basically started with dirt. For six months I lived in a camper on the field."

Back at the beginning of the their involvement in antique aviation, the first airplane acquired by the Doughertys was Cessna 195 N195PD (c/n 7460). Built in 1949, it was delivered in 1950 to the Chief Drilling Company of Oklahoma, which used it as a company aircraft. It changed owners many times before being damaged in a take-off accident and pushed aside on the field. Acquired in 1985, it took four years to restore to its present condition.

Paul recalls: "I saw this airplane for the first time at Warrington Airport around 1971. The owner never really took care of it and it more or less always was in a state of disrepair. My father used to lift me up so I could see inside the cockpit. In 1983,1 started hanging around the airport, being a line person at the FBO, pumping gas while learning to fly. The 195 was wrecked that year in a ground loop incident on its way to Oshkosh. The fuselage ended up badly twisted. We tried to acquire the Cessna without any success. It came down to a fire sale following a messy divorce. Everything had to go. At the time, the airplane was worth about $8000. We figured out that we could pick it up for cheap. At the auction, we were bidding against the owner who wanted to buy it back. We rapidly arrived at our maximum bid of $3500, splurged for another $100, and won the auction. It took us four years to restore and we took it to Oshkosh when it was completed and won a Golden Wrench award."

This started Paul's obsession with perfection in antique airplane restoration. After checking the competition at Oshkosh, he discovered that he could do better. He elected to look for an E-2 Cub. Being tipped off that there possibly was one in a barn not too far from his home, he checked it out only to discover that it was "a fairy tale." However, a Taylor showed up for sale in Trade-a-Plane shortly thereafter. John Barker, at the time director of Old Rhinebeck, was the owner and a 10:30 pm phone call settled the transaction. The following day, Paul took the 195 to Old Rhinebeck and signed off the papers and became proud owner of a very rare Taylor E-2 project.

Designed in 1930 by G.G. Taylor and advertised as "America's safe airplane," the E-2 Cub was the first in a long line of aircraft models to carry the Cub name. The Taylor Aircraft Corporation, which became the Piper Aircraft Corporation, produced this example in 1932 as serial number 54. It was acquired in 1991 after being stored for over 50 years. The restoration to original condition was completed over a three-year period. This airplane is one of the oldest E-2s know to exist.

GOLDEN AGE Air Museum

Air Classics, Apr 2005 by Auliard, Gilles

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