Mike Posey of the Posey Brothers Inc., a rare aircraft restoration company based in Robbinsville, New Jersey, tells what it was like restoring one of two remaining PA-8 Mailwings. The circa 1931 aircraft is housed at the Wings of Freedom Museum.
Cars nearly drove off the road at the sight. A black-and-yellow streak heading from Robbinsville, New Jersey to its final destination: Horsham.
A crew from Posey Brothers Inc., shared with glee the reaction of motorists at seeing the body of a circa 1931 PA-8 Mailwing fastened to the back of a flatbed truck as it was hauled to the Harold F. Pitcairn Wings of Freedom Museum on Aug. 20.
Aviation enthusiasts had hoped the rare aircraft - one of two left in the world - could be flown in to land on the runway at the shuttered Willow Grove air base, adjacent to the Delaware Valley Historical Aircraft Association's museum, but the federal government quashed that hope before it ever took off.
So, brothers Mike and Larry Posey, along with crew from their restoration and repair company, based out of hangars at Robbinsville Airport, took the former mail-carrying plane apart, drove it to Horsham in two trips Aug. 20 and Aug. 21 and spent roughly six hours over the two-day span reassembling it.
James Cole, one of the assemblers on hand during the second day of work, is the grandson of the late Harold F. Pitcairn, the Bryn Athyn aviator who created the Mailwing just yards from where it is currently housed on Easton Road.
"I guess I would like to still fly it occasionally," Cole said of the lone regret in seeing the plane transfer from his family to the museum, where it will be on display.
A pilot who flies "for fun," Cole said he's learned about his grandfather's early developments in rotary wing flight, but it was not something he was exposed to growing up.
"It wasn't something that was driven home to us," Cole said.
The Poseys, on the other hand, have worked in plane restoration for more than three decades. Most notably, Mike Posey went to work in 1986 for Stephen Pitcairn, the benefactor who willed the plane to the museum. Under the late Pitcairn's wing, Mike Posey headed up restoration efforts of four Pitcairn Mailwings, as well as a Pitcairn-Cierva PCA-1 Autogiro for the Smithsonian.
If you go
The Delaware Valley Historical Aircraft Association will unveil its PA-8 Mailwing today at 1 p.m. Click here for more information on Patch's events calendar.
http://horsham.patch.com/articles/video
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