Warbird Information Exchange

I finally go there a few months ago and they have a nice collection, nice facilities, etc.

However they don't fly them or restore aircraft for others. I have never heard who is "behind" the Museum........ I also hear that they do not get along with Planes of Fame.

So the questions are:

Who is behind the Yanks Museum?

Why don't they get along with POF (or the other way around?)?

Feel free to PM or eMail me if you don't want to post and I can keep a secret.

Thanks

Mark H

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Fly safe or you get to meet me .......

No secrets here! The museums just have a different focus. Yanks provided their P-38 and P-47 for some of the recent Planes of Fame annual airshows.

Charles Nichols (http://www.nicholslumber.com/ among other ventures) is the founder of the museum (http://www.yanksair.com/).

Planes of Fame has Yanks listed under "Please visit our friends..." at http://www.planesoffame.org/.

They do in fact fly some of their aircraft. Their Lockheed Electra was at a recent show in Los Alamitos and was in an Amelia Earhart show on The History Channel. Their Staggerwing flies on occasion, they occasionally fly the B-25 and they have flown their F-86 in the past year or so.

No one will forget any dealings with Stan. He was a crusty old fa*t but accomplished a great deal. Many of us referred to Yanks as the Wax Museum as their aircraft just sat there. Nichols had the fore site to collect tons of parts that sat around the LA area in surplus stores and the like. It seems the 70's saw the doom of several stores and others then lacked the desire to keep this stuff they had laying around for the past 25-30 years so quite a bit of stuff got scrapped in that time period. Just before the Warbird boom that happened going into the late 70's. Nichol's warehouse their at Chino had wooden crates stacked to the rafters. I peeked into a couple that had P-38 cowling one time and let that secret out when Stephen Grey bellied in his 38 soon after it arrived in England. It cost him a F8F project and he got some 38 stuff and a Wildcat in return. Stan was pretty secretive about the stuff there but we managed a few trades. Got yelled at. Got to view P-38 prints on Microfilm. (no index- you have to look thru thousands of prints, also Lockheed changed drawing sizes a few times during the war so most parts will have 3 different size drawings of the same part. It took days to find what you needed.) Then he would yell at me some more. It was a strange place run by strange people back in the 80's. That's my take on it. Stan has passed on now. The place is totally different now.
Rich

Stan did help quite a bit with the POF SBD as I recall, and I think the wings came from Nichols' stash as well.

I just remember the constant moaning and bitching over a trade of P-38 brake cylinders Steve had made and a P-38 Throttle Quadrant. I rebuilt the quadrant, made all the cables for engine controls and landing gear valve. installed it in the cockpit and one morning Stan walks in the hangar door of the shop and yells extremely loud so I can hear at the back of the shop- "Wheres my F***ing brake cylinder, I'm going to rip my throttle quadrant outta there if I don't get my parts!" and turns around and walks back out of the Musuem gate.
Aviation has a lot of characters.
Rich