Setting an inspirational example, the Dallas Star-Telegram reports on how old timers are restoring the history of aircraft.
At age 82, Ray Neal still goes to work at Vought Aircraft Industries twice a week.
Only now it’s a labor of love that motivates Neal to get out of the house instead of a paycheck.
Neal is one of a group of retired Vought employees who still trek to their former workplace on most Tuesdays and Thursdays to do what they love to do — work on old airplanes.
Most of the retirees worked for two decades or more for the Chance Vought Aircraft Co. or one of its later incarnations, including LTV Corp. Many were pilots, navigators or engineers, often with military experience and a love of all things aviation in their blood.
“The things that really keep us involved has more to do with aviation in general than just being Vought employees,” says Neal, one of nearly 100 members of the Vought Retirees Club who work on planes. “We would like future generations to know what we did in our generation.”
The object of Neal’s affection is the one-of-a-kind V-173 — known as the Flying Pancake — an experimental short-takeoff airplane once flown by Charles Lindbergh.
Piece by painstaking piece, Neal and other retirees have spent most of the last two years rebuilding the aircraft for the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. They have several more months of work left to restore the aircraft to its original appearance for museum display. They hope to show it off in Texas before returning it to the Smithsonian.
The team of old timers are sharing their passion for planes by helping not only restore the airplane’s history, but also it’s paperwork by finding or recreating drawings, manuals, and documentation about how the plane works and flies. In a way, they are recreating how it was done originally, helping to preserve the process as well as the plane. Well done!
