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In Flight USA Articles
Contrails: Fokker’s Over West Virginia
By Steve Weaver
The Red Baron didn’t fly them, but a little known fact is that the Fokker Aircraft Company had a factory in Glen Dale, West Virginia from the late ‘20s to about 1934, which produced the Fokker Tri Motor made famous by the Byrd Expedition.
After World War I, Anthony H. G. Fokker (1890–1939), the famous Dutch aircraft designer whose fighter planes were the scourge of Allied airmen throughout the War, also designed and built a series of successful civilian airliners during the 1920s.
One of his two American assembly plants was established in 1928 in Glen Dale, Marshel County in the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia. An adjacent grass landing strip, now named Fokker Field and still used for local sports flying, was the site of Fokker the test flights. At its peak, the Fokker plant employed 500 people from Glen Dale, Moundsville, and from the nearby Wheeling area. Fokker’s best-known airliner, used by airlines throughout the world, was the high-wing Tri Motor F-10A manufactured at Glen Dale.
Ninety Nines Women Pilots – Flying in Amelia Earhart’s Footsteps
By Donia Moore
OC 99s Aviation Week (Donia Moore)The Powder Puff Derby was in full flight, with aircraft landing and taking off from Lockheed Terminal, piloted by women members of the International Ninety Nines Women’s Flying Club. On the ground, Girl Scout Troop 671 watched in awe as the pilots maneuvered their aircraft around the tower and headed through the clear skies for the next leg of the relay air race. Most of the young Scouts had never even seen a small plane, outside or inside, and few had ever seen women pilots flying them. Amelia Earhart was a distant historical figure to most of them. The girls were at the airport to act as hostesses for the lady fliers, helping out where they could. One of the Scouts was so captivated by the 
Cameron’s first solo - Fullerton 99s. (Donia Moore)scene that she only stare longingly at what looked to her like toy airplanes come to life.
The mother of another of the Scouts was flying in the competition that day. Though she was well known and well liked by them all, none of the other Scouts except her daughter had ever seen her fly her plane before. Noting the rapturous look on the Scout’s face, she decided to return to the airport later that afternoon and offer to take the girls up for a ride. She didn’t know that the experience would fuel the lifelong dream of one young Scout to take her own place above the clouds.
Amelia Earhart Memorial: Help Bring the Lockheed Electra 10E to The Museum of Flight
By Herb Foreman
Amelia Earhart in front of her Electra 10-E.Recently, my friend Carol Osborne, as aircraft historian and author of a book regarding Amelia Earhart and her quest to be the first woman to circumnavigate the Earth called and asked me to become involved in a campaign to secure a Lockheed 10E similar to the one Earhart flew for the Seattle Museum of Flight. Her call brought back my memories as a child of 11 years in 1937 when President Franklin Roosevelt called for the Navy to do all it could to located Earhart’s downed plane along with her navigator, Fred Noonan off the coast of Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean. Seventy-five years have gone by and the search still continues.
TIGHAR To Search for Earhart’s Lockheed Electra
What's Up - April 2012
An Amazing Triple Play
By Larry Shapiro
You’d have to be living in a cave not to know that Reno is alive and well and will once again bring noise, dust, thrills and big hotel bills back to the Reno area. I know I’ve been heard saying, “the Reno Races have a life of their own and the world of aviation and or the government can’t stop it.” If you attend, enjoy and wear a hat. Send me a post card if you wish.
Of course I wish those that sign the bottom line up there, all the luck in the aviation world, and of course I pray that we will never see headlines like the ones we lived through last year. Sadly, we will have to muddle through pages of headlines and stories, all wrapped in hours of TV coverage on the 2011 race history, and once again put families and friends through refreshed pain. I’m sure “Reno” will find some way to honor those that sustained loses and do their best to pay the appropriate tribute.