My twin brother Matt wrote a nice entry in his blog about a trip that we took with an A-26 Invader that belonged to the Planes of Fame East Air Museum in Eden Prairie. Actually, hist post is not so much about the trip we took, but about the preparation for the trip.

We both used to be volunteers at POFE when it was a viable museum. We shared the job of crew chief of the museum’s A-26, which meant that we were in charge of handling the day-to-day upkeep of the airplane. In museum terms, that meant that we mostly kept it clean. We also got the privilige of helping with the maintenance of it, which was especially fun during annual inspection time. During the rest of the year, we keep the grease fittings filled with grease and we tried to pull the propellors through at least nine blades per engine, per week. By pulling the propellors through, we were literally turning the engine by hand. The point of this is to try keep the oil from pooling in the bottom cylinders of the engine and to try and keep the rest of the seals in the engine from drying out.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll try to finish the story he started and talk about the fantastic trip itself. The destination of that trip was none other than the fabulous EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, WI.

–Pete