A week ago I attended the Air Expo 2005, put on by my old friends from Wings of North, a non-profit group based out of Eden Prairie, MN. Wings of the North grew from the ashes of the Planes of Fame East Air Museum that used to be based at Flying Cloud Airport and closed in 1997 when the owner of the aircraft decided to pack them all up and move them to Palm Springs, California, to the Palm Springs Air Museum.

It was a good show. They had a nice variety of aircraft flying and on display. My favorite for the day had to be the Goodyear built Super Corsair, flown by Bob Odegaard. This is an extremely rare version of the famous Chance-Vought Corsair. It was built by the Goodyear corporation and had the extremely large Wright R-4360 engine in it. The R-4360 was the largest radial piston engine ever built, with 28 cylinders and producing up to 3500 horsepower. That is one monster piston engine!!

It was also fun to see a pair of beautifully restored WWII bombers. They had a B-25 Mitchell that belonged to the Southern Minnesota Wing of the Commemorative Air Force and B-17 Flying Fortress that belonged to the Yankee Air Force flying for the show.

I’ll be posting some pictures of the event in the next few days.

–Pete