... and headed east into the Cascade foothills to meet Ian, a British engineer who works in Everett, and in his spare time has at least four restoration projects under way! I first got in contact with him after finding his website:
N-5490 - Index Page He very kindly showed me what he had stashed in his garage.
Pieces of N5490 - his Tiger Moth:
Two pre-war Austins. A 1930 Morris Minor fabric saloon (with 4,000 miles on the clock from new):
and a 1933 McEvoy Special Minor Sports:
The unexpected highlight for me was a DH-82b Queen Bee drone, that Ian rescued from being sent to the dump by a technical college in Port Townsend:
What you can't see clearly in the pictures, is the flat metal braid that was inlaid into the wooden skin, in order to bond every metal piece of the aircraft, to prevent interference with the radio control receiver.
And here is the marvelous pneumatic autopilot:
Ian has certainly got his work cut out and if that's not enough, he's got a DH-60 Moth in boxes!
By the time we had finished chatting about these treasures, it was dark and so I had a three hour drive through the Cascades, without seeing the scenery, to Wenatchee, east of the mountains, in the Columbia valley, where I spent the night.