The Grant’s fly-out on February 18, 2023 to visit the Aviation Heritage Museum, started out with a cold, overcast day, and trying to plow through 30 knots of headwind. But before it was over we had 8 planes sitting on the ramp and 10 members enjoying a nice breakfast at the Wow Cafe and a tour of the museum on a sunny day with blue sky. A bonus was the 30 knot tailwind on the way home.
The centerpiece of the museum is the 50 foot tall, beacon tower sitting on a giant concrete arrow pointing towards the next waypoint on the Midcontinental Airway. An orange and white support building sits next to the tower and contains the support equipment to power the 2,000,000 candlepower beacon.
Among the various things to look at in the Museum is a display of some of the parts recovered from a crash site located about 20 miles NE of Grants on side of Mt Taylor. A Ford Trimotor carrying six passengers and two pilots on a Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT) flight out of Albuquerque on September 3, 1929, ran into the mountain in stormy weather and all souls aboard perished in the resulting crash. It was one of the first airline crashes on record. For more information checkout this website: https://www.lostflights.com/Commercial-Aviation/9329-Transcontinental-Air/
All told, the visit to the cafe and museum and resulting camaraderie, was well worth the flight. I highly recommend a visit to the Grant’s airport, museum, and nearby cafe the next time you are looking for an aerial adventure.
