Keith Lane
Pattern Altitude
This week I had the rare opportunity to work in Granite Falls, Minnesota (Brrr) on another train test. All went so well on the testing, that we got done a day earlier than expected. Our client is building a Rans light plane, and we of course talked planes constantly. As it turns out a local guy in Granite Falls is Ron Fagen, who is well known in the area for his company's construction and engineering of ethanol production plants. He also, is an airplane nut on a scale few people will ever know. Ron owns and flies a P-51, a P-40E, an Extra 300 and a P-38 Lightning. Thursday morning before returning to MSP for our return to ATL, we took a ride out to the airport (which he apparently built) and just "dropped in". The lady in the office (Deb) was incredibly nice and she opened up Ron's hangar, flipped on the lights, and just let us wander around like she had known us all our lives taking pictures for as long as we wanted. In another hangar, a few guys were modifying a jig for building complete P-40 wings. They had originally built the jig using only a right wing, which was all they had at the time, and mirrored it for the left wing. Now they have acquired a complete wing from a crashed P-40 in Russia and have it in their jig and were making small adjustments in order to fabricate complete wings from scratch. There were at least three fuselages, and as you can see in the pictures he has quite a collection of engines. I cannot overstate how friendly and welcoming everybody was at the Fagen operation. We were made to feel as though we came by all the time and there was absolutely no hint that we in any way a bother. See the pics, and try not to drool on your keyboard.
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