- Today's episode brings us to Groveland, California and it's oasis in the sky, Pine Mountain Lake Airport and its community of pilots, props, and planes.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for "Pilots, Props And Planes" is provided by.

(upbeat music) Reedley College is proud to be a part of the aviation industry, providing advanced education in all aspects of flight science, aviation mechanics, and professional pilot training.

Go tigers.

(plane engine roaring) (gentle music) - There are an estimated 426 air parks throughout the United States.

An air park allows a pilot to live with their aircraft right outside their home, either in a garage or in a hangar, and it's perfect for the pilot who has to commute to another city for work or for the recreational pilot that wants to have their aircraft right there at their home.

Today we're visiting Pine Mountain Lake Airport located in the Sierra Gold Country in Groveland, California.

We're here in the hangar of Michael and Jules Thoben, and they're gonna tell us a little bit about their 826 Vulcan.

Michael, what prompted you to purchase this particular aircraft?

- So the Vulcan is a Ukraine built aircraft very specifically built for observation.

And it's kind of rare in the United States, I think there are three of 'em flying total in United States, over 12 of them built.

It'll go as slow as 40 miles an hour comfortably, and about 105 or 110 miles an hour.

So it's a pretty big envelope of speed.

Observations are great in this because you have a canopy that's over the top of your head, allows you to see all the way around.

It lands in about 70 feet and takes off in about 40 feet.

So it's very short both takeoff and landing distances.

- You have a very impressive collection of aircraft.

Would you please name each of them for me?

- Sure, let's talk at the other end of the spectrum.

That's a Lancair Legacy with a supercharger on it.

So it's about a 300 mile an hour airplane primarily used for getting places quickly.

They race 'em in Reno.

The one in the far back is a Waco YMF-5.

Two in the front one in the back, You fly it from the back.

(gentle music) The little Cessna here is a 1976 Cessna 150 that my wife got her license in.

And the one in the far back is a B36 TC Bonanza, six passenger turbocharged Bonanza.

- What brought you to Pine Mountain Lake Airport?

- Well, we wanted to live with our airplanes.

It's kind of hard these days to even live close to your airplanes, so unless you live in an air park, you can't really live with your airplanes.

This community's got an awful lot to offer.

It's an equestrian, golf, tennis, pickleball, swimming, hiking.

- The lake, sailing.

- Yeah, so it's real the community itself that brought us here and our ability to live with the airplanes and get up in the morning and come down in our hangar and jump on a plane and go someplace.

- What are some of your feelings about having young people involved in aviation today?

- Actually, I personally spend a lot of time trying to promote that.

I'm on a board of directors that's dedicated into getting youth in aviation.

I think it's very important.

The number of pilots in the United States is about 550,000 pilots and it's a pretty stagnant number.

So it's my belief that unless there are pilots like us that go around actively promote pilots and try to get them enthused about flying, that number will continue to diminish.

And Young Eagles, we take kids up all the time.

We have a program here at Pine Mountain Lake to take kids up in Young Eagles, and we have a lot of Aircrafts and volunteers that take kids up.

And it's amazing, the kids who've been flying simulators or playing games, how good they are at articulating the controls of an aircraft.

- I understand your home has been featured in "Architectural Digest."

- Actually, we designed this house in 2000, started building it in 2001.

Took approximately three years to build, it's primarily steel, glass, and stone.

Very modern if you look on the outside.

And there were a number of different features in this house that caused "Architectural Digest" to be interested in the metal work inside.

So we have metal floors in the kitchen, it's seamless to the sides and the walls and throughout the house.

So we're quite pleased with the structural integrity of it during the earthquake season as well, and the fire season up here at Pine Mountain Lake.

(gentle music) - I'm visiting with Alan Buchner here in his hangar at Pine Mountain Lake, which is actually more of a museum than a hangar as you'll see shortly.

How long have you been rebuilding airplanes?

- I started working for my dad when I was 14.

- He had a rather interesting career which included flying the air mail.

Now didn't he do that in one of the airplanes here at the Waco?

- Yes, he was the first air mail flight outta Bakersfield.

- [Bill] Now, how did the Waco come back to be in your collection?

- I was standing at a fly in with a good friend of mine and I said, "Someday, I'd like to have a Waco."

We were looking into a Waco.

Then he said, "Well there's one in a barn down the street."

So we went to a Crop Duster Airport just 10 miles away, and there was a Waco all apart, standing on his nose in the corner with the engine out of it, and the wings off, the tail off.

The fuselage is over in the middle of the valley over there by Fresno and the wings are down in Bakersfield.

It took me 25 years to get it together.

- Did you know it was your dad's airplane at the time?

- I had no idea that it was my dad's until the Waco club sent me a list of all the owners.

My dad's the third owner.

- [Bill] I bet you were surprised about that.

- Yeah.

- You've won a few awards with it.

- [Alan] I just got the airplane just about finished, I still had a lot of little details to work on and it was the year of the Waco at Oshkosh in '95, and that was the first flying I went to with it.

They gave me a reserve grand champion.

- Is that right?

- Which was a big surprise.

And then I came back home with it and finished it.

And they invited me back next year and I got grand champion that night too.

- [Bill] Did you really, the following year?

- Yep.

- So what are you working on now?

- Oh, I've got another rare one, just like the one I had got when I was 18 and it just sat for a while till I moved up here and then I started working on it.

- [Bill] So the hangar really does house a wonderful collection, and it is a museum.

Is this museum open to the public?

- [Alan] Sure.

- Well Alan, thank you very much.

- Sure.

- As always, it's been a pleasure.

- Thank you.

(upbeat music) - We're a few hangars down from Alan Buchner's fabulous aviation museum.

And right now I'm with Steve Nash, and Steve tank you very much for inviting us to your hangar.

- Great to have you.

- Welcome to the show.

- Thank you.

- This hangar is cool.

How did you do all this?

- Well, a lot of our hangars up here are working hangars, as my neighborhood calls his, and this is a party hangar.

- Okay.

- We do a lot of entertaining in here and we just kinda love of that theme and just taken it to a new level.

- Tell us about the airplanes you have.

- Well in kind of golfing terminology, I have my driver and my wedge.

- Okay.

- So I have the Cirrus is what I commute in.

And then I have a Carbon Cub for just having good times out here in the canyons.

- Well, let's start Cirrus then.

Fast airplane, efficient airplane, and you commute back and forth from here to?

- To Reid-Hillview Airport in San Jose area.

- Carbon Cub, it looks like a J3 but it's really not.

A lot of modifications, a lot of changes.

Explain some of those.

- [Steve] It's got the vortex generators.

It weighs about a thousand pounds and has 180 horsepower.

So it's very, very responsive, but you can land it in the low 40s miles an hour.

And it's just, it's pretty amazing to land a plane that slow.

- So there's a little character behind me with sunglasses on.

- Oh, that's scooter.

- [Bill] And what's the story behind scooter?

- Scooter is a practical joke that got a little outta hand.

- [Bill] Okay.

- My flying partners, Vicky and Jeff Benzene have a King Air and they always leave it with the door open in the hangar, and I decided to put scooter in the King Air.

So I asked Jeff to show me his avionics of the King Air, and he bounded up and jumped in there and- - Oh my God.

- He found a coyote staring at him on the floor of his airplane.

(laughing) So that's how we acquired Scooter, it was purely for a practical joke and it worked out pretty well.

- Steve, thank you very much.

Thanks for inviting us into your hangar for talking about your aircraft and for your wonderful hospitality.

- Great to have you.

- Thank you.

(gentle music) Today's scrapbook segment goes back well over a decade right here in Kent and Sandy Blankenburg's hangar here at Pine Mountain Lake Airport.

- This is a Spartan Executive built in 1939 pre-war.

One of 34 total production, one of six left flying in the world.

This one was one of the Texas Company fleet which we know to be Texaco Oil now, they actually own five Spartan Executive and had them posted in places around their office.

This one was based in Chicago for the Texas company.

It was the boss around airplane.

I'm sure when you arrived in this in 1939, you were in tall cotton.

This was sitting forlorn in a museum in Galveston, Texas, in a very much military museum where it didn't belong.

We ferried that out, other Spartan owner friends said, "If you could find Malcolm Jacob's airplane, "you'd really have a good one to start with."

We did, we went out and found it and it was sitting in this museum and not being kept or cared for.

It was in his side and hangar, but they didn't have use for it.

My phone call towards them was on a Thursday morning after their Wednesday evening board meeting that decided the disposal of this aircraft, my timing couldn't have been more fortunate.

So we did business and flew her home.

Then it's cosmetic work.

It had orange carpet, it had orange trim, and had brown windows, and it was a 70s restoration by a gentleman who put 34 years of his life into this airplane.

A gentleman by the name of Malcolm Jacobs who really did care for the airplane but it was into his taste and the taste of the 70s.

We think it's our taste, green jacket, green airplane, green windows.

It's we like it.

So we just put our heart and soul into it, polish and make 'em proud.

Oh, we just travel all we can, and of course air shows are a key ingredient.

We do other travel than air shows and or we combine go see some relatives, go to some fun destination on the way to Oshkosh or on the way to Canada, and so we do exercise these airplanes a lot and great joy in doing that.

It's almost a 200 mile hour airplane, reaches out very well.

Limousine ride, just a great joy to traveling.

We just get wound up in these things and they're great treasures of yesteryear, and we're privileged to be the current caretakers and hope we do good at that and don't hurt 'em and other people love that same good feeling have great joy and pride in bringing something back and making it fly again, making it go again.

I hope they don't all end up in museums that don't fly, 'cause I think it's joyous, you know, they have a heart and a soul and we want 'em exercised.

We want 'em out and about and so we do that, we do that a lot.

(gentle music) Well, it was not by design, it just evolves.

We knew we wanted to live in the hangar and we're enjoying that a great deal.

We did that previously in San Luis Obispo and the pieces just start to come without a design.

And if it's round and chromey I guess that's our decoish, that's a major focus and they're of the era of the aircraft.

The aircraft set the year of what we're interested in.

Well, these kinda look like little bumper cars and they're very stout and heavy, and very low gear, and very vintage.

Their late 30s, early 40s.

(gentle music) - [Sandy] The Lockheed was in "The Rocketeer" for, well, we filmed for a week.

- So we sat with our Lockheed as though we had flown into the air races to be a spectator.

So they had a dozen airplanes maybe, something about that right.

A lot of people look up in the sky and enjoy wanting to be there, and I did that till has about 30 years old and opportunity of hours to apply them to aviation.

Worked long, hard hours in our business and didn't afford the time to become a pilot, but once I did, now I can't get enough.

(upbeat music) - [Bill] This Rocketeer banner was in the Blankenburg hangar back then and it remains in the hangar today.

(plane engine roaring) Today at Pine Mountain Lake Airport we have seen a wonderful collection of aircraft ranging from vintage antique, by planes and mono planes in a museum, to state of the art carbon fiber tail wheel aircraft as well as commuter aircraft.

We're now gonna visit with Jason Johanson who is going to tell us a little bit about aircraft that are designed and built to take off in land from the water.

Jason, you're sitting on a float that's attached to a Cessna 206, tell us a little bit about what taking off and landing on the water is like and what is needed for an aircraft to be able to do that?

- This one's a 1979, it's a Cessno 206 like you mentioned, got whip lane, 37/30 floats on it.

And it is, is not a good airplane and not a good boat, but it does do both at the same time.

It allows me to take off from my house where I live here and go fly to the nearby lakes and take my family and friends and go fishing or camping, and that's something that we get to the lakes that hardly anybody can get to so that makes it a lot of fun.

- It probably is an unusual experience because every time you see an airplane, it's taking off from a paved runway and this airplane obviously can do both because it's got a retractable landing gear built up into the floats.

- Sure.

- So you can take off in land and as well on ground as on the water.

The aircraft that's sitting outside is an Amphibian, it's a twin engine Amphibian and tell us a little bit about that airplane.

- Well that airplane is a called a STOL UC-1 known as a twin bee.

So it was originally built in 1946 as a single pusher and was converted to twin in 1972.

So there's only 23 of those made, there's about five left.

So it's kind of a unique one anyways.

- Are certain lakes not capable for landing or regulatory wise?

- There are definitely lakes you cannot land on, and the best way to find out, The Sea Plane Pilots Association puts out, they have an app or a little booklet, you can look in and tell you the major lakes, who runs them and what their restrictions are.

If the lake is not published, I have a book called "The Recreational Lakes Of California" and it has the phone number of who's in charge of the lake and you could call them directly and ask if they're okay with float plane operations or if they have any restrictions.

- Very cool.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you for having us and for sharing some insight into part of the world of aviation a lot of people don't really know exists, and that's taking off and landing on water.

- That's right.

- I'm visiting with aerobatic champion and airshow legend, Wayne Handley.

Wayne, what brought you to the oasis in the sky here at Pine Mountain Lake Airport.

- We were developing friends up here, a social life up here, and it fit the criteria and weather and all, and so we made the decision to move up.

- Initially, what could you into aviation?

(laughing) - My mother used the spoon as the airplane and my mouth was the hangar.

(laughing) So I've loved to eat and fly ever since.

I wanted to fly, knew I wanted to fly professionally, but didn't know how I was gonna get my commercial license.

That was a big step financially, you know.

So Navy took care of that.

- [Bill] How many years did you fly in the Navy?

- Five and a half.

- [Bill] And what'd you fly?

- Well, we went through the training command T34, T28 F9.

F11, in a training command and all, you know, great time of my life.

- So from the Navy you got into agricultural flying in the Salinas Valley.

- So I started my crop dusting career in 1965.

I look back on it, never do that again.

(laughing) I started doing a few little air shows, flying high and easy and no big push just barbecues, that type of thing, you know.

And a couple years went by and it just kept growing, I kept going to further and bigger shows.

And so what's the criteria that I have to come up with for a air show airplane.

Well, my wife had been driving or flying commercial and meet me at airshow venues, not ideal, not ideal.

So I decided I'm gonna go with a six cylinder mono plane two place, so she could go with me, and then I designed a cargo pod to go on the bottom.

So I flew the Raven through the 90s, up through to '98 actually, and then by that time I developed the the turbo Raven and went with that.

- [Bill] Let's go to the cockpit and Mr. Wayne Handley, Wayne good afternoon and I've got your clearance for takeoff.

Are you ready to copy?

- Good afternoon Bill, I am ready to copy.

Go ahead please.

- [Bill] Oracle, turbo, Raven 17, hotel, echo, you are clear to your present position.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, have your cameras ready for the unbelievable Oracle Turbo Raven as Wayne gets into the air.

In less than 100 feet.

Up and over the top in that Oracle Turbo Raven, Mr. Wayne Handley in this one of a kind aircraft and he has got to be back on the ground again in less than 60 seconds, can he do it?

Look at the descent.

From about 2000 feet, he drops down in over a 70 degree angle of descent, ladies and gentlemen, and watch how quickly this airplane comes to a complete stop after he touches down.

And ladies and gentlemen, that's just the beginning.

Let's hear it from Mr. Wayne Handley.

- Are you still flying aerobatics?

- Yeah, not as much as I, you know, it's really dropped off it.

I have a a partnership in a Citabria with Chris Linquist and Chris also owns an Extra 300.

And at times when he'll take the Citabria down to the bay area, he will leave the Extra here for me to fly.

And he wants me to exercise it for him a couple hours a month with which I really love.

So the Citabria is aerobatic mildly, you know, I can take people out and do a loop and roll and a spin and that.

But by flying the Extra four or five time.

You know I'll take it out for half an hour or so, but I can go through some of my old air show maneuvers and maintain my timing and all so it will break loose and tumble or do whatever I want to do.

- Well, Wayne, thank you very much.

It's been a real joy to sit here and visit with you today, and thanks for being a part of our show.

(gentle music) The very first aviation community opened here in Fresno California in 1946.

It was the vision of Bill and Dora Smiley, and it sits on 130 acres of land overlooking the San Joaquin River.

(gentle music) The roadways are 150 feet wide, so a plane can be taxing and still have room for cars to pass on either side.

Now the streets don't have traditional curbs and gutters and because many aircraft have low wings, street signs had to be shortened.

They're only a couple of feet high so airplanes can taxi without flipping their wings.

Another accommodation for planes is at the edge of the taxi way in front of the homes here.

People land on the runway turn off onto a residential street to taxi to their home, but every home also has a mailbox out in front right at the edge of the taxi way.

The mailboxes have to be about four feet high, so they're on special posts.

If a plane's wing hits a mailbox, it's on a hinge post and just bends over to let the plane pass, then springs back up again.

A lot of the people who live at Sierra Sky Park are completely devoted to their aviation interests.

Some will build custom airplanes or restore older planes and they maintain their own aircraft all in the comfort of their own homes.

Events are held every year at Sierra Sky Park, including car shows and fly ins.

And you know, for people whose hearts and souls are into aviation, it doesn't get much better than this.

(plane engine roaring) (upbeat music) That's it for today's episode of "Pilots, Props And Planes."

We'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for "Pilots, Props And Planes" is provided by.

Reedley College, nestled against the Sierra in central California offers a full spectrum of flight science, aviation mechanics, and professional pilot education in an affordable community college setting.

Go Tigers.

(upbeat music)