MUSEUM NEWS, ALL THINGS THAT YOU NEED TO KNOW!

The Museum's New Lady: Tanker A-13

2012-01-13T11:04:00.001-08:00

This past October the Museum of Mountain Flying welcomed the latest addition to our collection: Grumman TMB "Avenger" C-GLEL, or Tanker A-13.

This airplane, like our DC-3, is a survivor of Johnson Flying Service, having flown as a fire suppression tanker out of missoula in the late sixties and early seventies.

Following her sale toForest Protection Limited of New Brunswick, Canada, A-13 continued to serve as a beetle sprayer and fire suppression bomber until she and her sisters were retired in 2004.

We at the museum are wanting to keep this beautiful example of Aviation history flyable. She will be restored to her JFS colors this coming summer, and we invite all to come visit us to see her progress!

Photo Credits: Morgan Kinney

WANTED: A Link Trainer.

2011-07-12T19:50:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone!

Summer is nearly half over, and we are having a wonderful time. Thank you to all the people who have come to visit us already, and we hope that more of you come visit.

Currently, We at the museum are looking for an artifact an need your help. We are looking for a Link Trainer, like the one pictured, for our Johnson Flying Service Display. During World War 2, JFS used one of these early flight simulators to train pilots in the Civilian Pilot Training Program. If anyone has a lead to one that may be for sale, please, let us know!!

SUMMER 2011

2011-05-19T06:56:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone!

After a winter of relative quite and inactivity, we at the Museum of Mountain Flying would like to welcome visitors to come visit us starting Memorial Day Weekend. Our hours of operation are 10:00 AM until 4:00 PM, 7 days a week.Please, come visit!

This Year marks a milestone in the museum's history, as well as the history of Missoula Montana. It has been 100 years since the first airplane flew here, planting the seeds for one of the most unique aviation histories in the world.

In other news and events, the Museum will be having its annual fundraiser on June 11. This fundraiser is a dinner with a guest speaker and a cash bar. The party starts at 7:00pm.

Prices per table/ten seats are $1000.00, and per place setting is $100.00

Also, on June 25-26 there will be celebrations of the First Flight in Missoula at the Fort Missoula Museum, and at the airport there will be several aircraft displays, including a water drop by the new FIREBOSS single engine fire bomber.

We hope to see everyone this summer, and check back for more updates!!

Thank You!

Museum of Mountain Flying Staff

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-22T08:26:00.000-08:00

Hello and Christmas Greetings!
We athe the Museum Of Mountain Flying would like to wish everyone a safe and happy Holiday Season. Thank you all for your continued support and interest in our institution and we hope to see you all in the Spring!

Happy Holidays!
The Museum Of Mountain Flying Staff

EMAIL MELTDOWN!

2010-11-10T12:37:00.000-08:00

Many apologies to our friends and visitors who have sent us emails for the last three months. It seems that our email account was locked out and only just in the last two days has been repaired. We will be doing our best to reply to the email backlog asap! Thanks for understanding and for your continued support!!

Museum of Mountain Flying Webmaster.

Summer!

2010-05-27T18:56:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone! Summer is here and the Museum of Mountain Flying will be offically open May 29th! Hours are 10 am to 4pm, seven days a week. We will be open on Memorial Day. A Big Thanks to all the men and women of the armed forces, past, present and future!

A look back on the fundraiser we had on May 14th shows that it was a huge success! Thanks to all who came out for dinner, and to Ken Dial for an amazing talk about the bio-mechanics of Bird Flight!

That is all we have currently, but please, come out and visit us!

FUNDRISER!

2010-05-11T13:58:00.001-07:00

"FLIGHT" - Museum of Mountain Flying Fundraiser Dinner

FLIGHT Fundraising dinner featuring University of Montana Biology Professor Ken Dial. Friday, May 14th @ 7PM at the Museum of Mountain Flying.

We are very excited to have Ken Dial as our featured speaker. Most of you know Ken as a local pilot who owns and flies a Cessna Citation, he also is a leading authority on Bird flight.

Ken has been featured in AOPA magazine, has given presentations to Dick and Burt Rutan at Scaled Composites, The Experimental Test Pilots Society, and The Royal Aeronautical Society.

He also was flown to the Paris Airshow by SAAB Aircraft as a guest speaker.

Ken does most of his research at a million dollar flight lab at Fort Missoula, and has taught at the University of Montana for many years.

The evening will focus on Ken's presentation and will include dinner. We have 20 tables that seat 10 people per table. A table can be reserved with a $1000 tax deductable donation to the Museum of Mountain Flying. To date, we have sold 17 tables mainly to local aviation businesses.

This is going to be a great Aviation Event and will help the Museum continue to operate. If you have any questions or suggestions pleasecontact Art Dykstra at 360-3645.

SUCCESS! WE SHALL PREVAIL!

2010-01-27T12:37:00.000-08:00

Much good news for us at the Museum of Mountain Flying this week. Yesterday, Jan. 26, the Museum and supporters met with the Missoula Airport board concerning our rent situation, and we were successful. Rent is now far lower then before and we can continue educating the public and preserving our aviation history.

Here is the whole story from the Missoulian:

The museum that brings us the plane that flew smokejumpers to their doom in Mann Gulch in 1949 was thrown a lifeline Tuesday.

By a 7-0 vote, the Missoula County Airport Authority agreed to knock off 90 percent of the rent that the Museum of Mountain Flying pays to operate its 25,000-square-foot hangar at Missoula International Airport.

The decision means that, counting utilities and a common area maintenance fee that all airport tenants pay, the private museum with a shoestring budget will shell out about $365 a month to stay put.

That compares with the nearly $850 a month without the break in rent, which museum supporters say is way too much to keep the doors open on the seasonal operation with a lean budget and an impressive inventory of aircraft and paraphernalia celebrating the history of flight in the Rocky Mountains.

“There’s no way we can continue paying $844 a month when we open only 3 or 3 1/2 months of the year,” said Stan Cohen, co-founder of the museum and president of its board of directors.

The museum centerpiece is the Johnson Flying Service “Mann Gulch plane,” a DC-3/C-47 that’s in the process of being restored to 1949 condition. The idea is to have a flying history lesson and memorial to those lost at Mann Gulch north of Helena and other wildland fires.

Museum supporters appeared before the Airport Authority at its monthly meeting at Missoula International Airport hoping for full rent abatement or, barring that, a reduction to cover only the summer months the doors are open.

They didn’t get either, but say they came away satisfied.

“I think it’s a challenge, and I think we’ve got a good chance we can make it work,” Jim Valeo of the museum board. “We’re going to put our shoulders to the grindstone and make it work.”

Museums as a rule don’t make a profit, and this one, run as a nonprofit corporation, is forever on a shoestring budget. The Flying Museum has been paying full rent since last July and has stayed above water only by selling a bus and a fire engine.

Eviction from the choice property would present a tangle of problems. While rent is charged on all airport land, the museum board owns the hangar and what’s inside. Moving the building would be impractical, Cohen said, and since the museum is owned by a nonprofit corporation, revenue from selling the hangar and its exhibits by law would have to be donated to other nonprofits.

“I have talked to the county. We would love to be in the county museum system, but we’re not eligible because of their accreditation, which is very difficult to get,” Cohen told the airport board. “To be accredited you have to be open year-round, with paid staff and a curator.”

He said Richard Simms, director of the Montana State Historical Society, visited and “was very interested in the museum.”

“But he said he’s got his own problems trying to raise $13 million dollars to build his own new (state) museum in Helena,” Cohen said. “The only other government entity would be you people.”

The issue attracted an uncommonly large crowd to the authority’s monthly meeting. Some two dozen people sat in the gallery at the airport conference room, including representatives of Minuteman Jet Center and Northstar and Neptune Aviation, which maintain their own private operations at the airport. Both spoke in favor of the rental break and in admiration of flying museum volunteers.

“We know what these guys have been doing, and I think it’s amazing what they’ve done,” said Forrest Gue of Minuteman. “We support them in any way we can.”

The airport board granted the fee reduction for 10 years, with the provision that the museum board presents an annual report of its progress.

Cliff Larsen, vice president of the airport board, lauded museum supporters for a “very professional approach” to their presentation, which included a financial report, information on the museum’s new Web site, www.museummountainflying.org; and letters from Hellgate Elementary School Superintendent Bruce Whitehead and Kay Ebelt, who teaches aeronautics at Target Range School, urging the board’s support to keep the museum alive.

Speaking on behalf of the museum board, Art Dykstra said the board did some soul-searching “trying to figure out why this seems to be an issue for us.”

It came to the realization “that what we failed to do was to express to the board why this was such an important organization to us,” Dykstra said, thus the multi-pronged packet of information.

Larsen said the presentation was in contrast to the museum’s more informal and less substantive appearance in spring 2008, which by some accounts was less genial than Tuesday’s meeting.

Afterward, Valeo said he appreciated the airport board’s empathy.

“There was a feeling of acceptance in this meeting that I thought was really rewarding,” he said.

Created in 1993, the Museum of Mountain Flying spent its first seven years in a tiny hangar before receiving the current one as a donation. Its small collection has grown to include a Twin Beechcraft Model 18; a rare model of Huey helicopter; two small home-built planes with radio receivers that serve as static displays for kids to climb in; and a 1930 Moth that hung for years in the Helena Airport Terminal before it was given to the Missoula museum after a remodel.

Reporter Kim Briggeman can be reached at 523-5266 or at kbriggeman@missoulian.com.

2010-01-05T11:42:00.000-08:00

HAPPY BELATED CHRISTMAS, NEW YEARS, AND ALL OTHER ASSORTED HOLIDAYS!
As everyone knows, much stress, craziness and time consuming activities are had by all over the holidays, which is why the news hasn't been updated. Many apologies to our visitors.

Woo! Welcome to 2010 "THE FUTURE!" Insert Buck Rodgers theme here. Hope everyone who has come by the Museum's website has had a good holiday season. We are looking forward to the new year, and are looking to be ready to open our doors again in mid April! Work continues on the website, be it slowly (that webmaster is one of those crazy collage kids, who is so busy his hair is turning gray. No lie). Hopefully, soon, we will be linked on other air museums pages, as well as with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Historic Fort Missoula and the Missoula Art Museum. Updates as they come!

A Sad Day

2009-11-17T08:41:00.000-08:00

Its a bummer really that the first bit of news for the new site is a sad thing. We lost one of our members and aviation pioneers, Earl Cooley, 0n Monday November 9th, 2009. This obituary if from the Missoulian newspaper on Nov. 13th. We will all miss him.

MISSOULA – Earl E. Cooley, 98, pioneer smokejumper, passed away peacefully at his home surrounded by family on Monday, Nov. 9, 2009.

Earl was born Sept. 26, 1911, in Sarpy Creek. His mother, Daisy Dyckman, and father, Wilford, homesteaded along Sarpy Creek 40 miles northeast of Hardin. In 1923, his family lost all their savings and moved to a small farm near Corvallis. Earl delayed finishing high school for two years to work on his father’s farm and to run a trapline. After graduation from Corvallis High School in 1930, he worked on various ranches throughout the Bitterroot Valley picking apples and topping beets.

Earl thought the Forest Service seemed to fit his love of hunting, fishing and trapping so he hired on as a fire guard. He started Forestry School in Missoula in the fall of 1937. He had been out of school eight years and missed the first five weeks of his first quarter because he was quarantined with smallpox. During his four years at the UM, he worked for the Forest Service and built a house for his mother, his sister and himself. Upon graduating in 1941, he moved the house onto a new foundation and added two rooms. Earl and his steady girlfriend, Irene Goldie Cook, were married June 8, 1941.

In 1940, an experimental smokejumping project started in Region 1 and Region 6. Rufus Robinson and Earl made the first fire jumps on Martin Creek in the Nez Perce National Forest. In 1942, he was given an occupational deferment to continue fighting forest fires. By the spring of 1943, there was a manpower shortage to fight forest fires so volunteers were solicited from the Civilian Public Service program. Earl trained conscientious objectors (members of the Mennonites, Brethren and Friends) to become squad leaders and riggers for all the regions. The fire training was done at Nine Mile Camp and Camp Menard at Seeley Lake. The CPS program was terminated the summer of 1945. One of the greatest tragedies of his life occurred Aug. 5, 1949. Earl was the spotter on the Mann Gulch fire, where 13 men, 12 of them smokejumpers, died in the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness in Helena National Forest.

In the fall and winter of 1944, Earl served briefly on the Kootenai National Forest in Libby. In 1950, he became the district ranger of the Red River District in the Nez Perce National Forest. Earl enjoyed the great hunting and fishing along the Salmon River; his family also enjoyed five wonderful summers at the Red River Ranger Station. In 1955, he was transferred to the Noxon District that included the Cabinet Wilderness. There Earl was very active in community affairs and served as president of the Chamber of Commerce and the PTA. He enjoyed bowling, and, of course, hunting and fishing.

In 1958, Earl returned to Missoula as the Smokejumper Base superintendent. He built his own house at 2801 Queen St., where he installed a bowling alley in the basement. He wasn’t quite ready to retire from the Forest Service, so in 1971 so he became a regional equipment specialist. He was quite proud of being a part of some new inventions, including a tanker capable of releasing 1,000 gallons of retardant rather than the previous 300-gallon capacity tanker. In 1975, he retired from the Forest Service to pursue in a new career in real estate. In 1976, he became a broker for Cooley Realty.

One of his greatest achievements was writing about his life and his history with the Forest Service in his 1984 book, “Trimotor and Trail.” He continued to share his experiences through countless interviews and storytelling.

Earl was the founder and past president of the National Smokejumper Association (1993-1995) and was named president emeritus in recognition of his ongoing commitment and contributions to the smokejumpers. In recent years, Earl presented the graduating rookie smokejumpers with their jumping pins and graduation certificates.

Earl lived a full and amazing life, having spent 68 wonderful years with his wife, Irene. Earl remained very active until the last year of his life, including overseeing the annual harvest of his cherry and apple trees. The family would like to thank Hospice of Missoula for their compassion, care and support over the last year.

He was preceded in death by seven brothers and sisters. His remaining brother Bob lives in Polson; and his sister, Betty Jane Meyer lives in Missoula. He is survived by his wife, Irene, 89; and his five daughters and sons-in-law, Sharon and Tod Hackman of Mesa , Ariz., Marabeth and Larry Fite of Stevensville, Barbara and Don Ranstrom of Chinook, Cheryl and Duane Zemliska of Nampa, Idaho, and Marcy and Mark Halvorson of Missoula. He also is survived by 12 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.

The memorial service will be at 10 a.m. Monday, Nov. 16, at the Sunset Funeral Home. A family burial will take place at 2 p.m. Monday, at the Corvallis Cemetery.

Memorials may be made to the National Smokejumper Association or Hospice of Missoula.

THE NEW WEBSITE!

2009-11-16T12:50:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the Museum of Mountain Flying, located in Missoula, Montana! A million apologies to the world of aviation for now getting one of these set up sooner, but here we are! Even though our site is still under construction, please email us with questions or comments! Currently, the Museum is closed for the winter season, but private tours can be arranged. For more information on that, please call 4-6-207-3929, or email us at MuseumMountainFlying@gmail.com.