Wing and a Prayer
In conjunction with the Canadian Aviation Historical Society, we’re presenting two nights of Canadian aviation history on film. Doors open at 6:30 pm and films start at 7:00 pm. Admission is just $5 per person to cover a full evening.
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Difficult to fly, easy to ground-loop – an entire generation of pilots earned their wings on the Boeing Stearman. It was an aircraft adopted by the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1943 as a supplemental trainer for the Tiger Moth. Prized for its advanced performance capabilities, it was soon rejected because the open cockpit wasn’t suitable for Canadian winters.
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Tom Lamb once shuttled 16 beavers as part of a program to restock beavers into lakes around The Pas. It was the 1940s and, hard as it is to believe today, beavers had become almost extinct across Manitoba. As he tells the tale, at 6,000 feet, the critters started escaping from their gunnysacks. The cabin was soon filled with curious beavers. They clambered over Lamb’s feet, stood on hind legs to inspect the control panels, and hopped onto seats for a better view—while Lamb tried to navigate his five-seater Stinson.
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The angled blades you see on the front of many helicopters are not radio antennas or hood ornaments as many might believe. They are the components that make up the Wire Strike Protection System (WSPS).
Developed between 1977-1979 – in response to a request from the Canadian Forces – Bristol Aerospace in Winnipeg invented this simple system to protect helicopters from the often fatal results of a wire strike in low-level flight. Using this lightweight – under 10 kg – system, helicopters are able to vastly increase their chances of surviving a wire strike.
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Family memberships are an important source of revenue for our museum as we receive only 10% of our annual funding from government sources. Here’s the Top Ten Reasons why a membership in the Western Canada Aviation Museum – only $50 a year – is the best value in town for family entertainment:
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE BY ED UNRAU In the 1962 cartoon, “The Jetsons”, George Jetson commutes to work in an aerocar that resembles a flying saucer with a transparent bubble top. And just a few short years later, in September 1969, National Geographic published an article titled, “The Coming Revolution in Transportation,” written by Frederic C. Apell. [...]
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If you ‘re like most business travellers, you’ll recognize that the golden era of business travel has come and gone. Today’s security procedures, delays, line-ups and documentation have made it more of an endurance test than a perk of the job. But in 1920, Frank Stanley took a ‘flyer’ on how he could use an [...]
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It was a tough year for our renowned restoration team. We lost five of our volunteers this year — a great loss, not only of good friends and co-workers but also, the loss of their particular technical expertise will have a great effect on our future restoration efforts. This year’s honour roll includes: Mike [...]
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In early December 1935, two men flew over the last unexplored area on earth – the Antarctic. One of them was the American world-famous explorer Lincoln Ellsworth and the other was Herbert Hollick-Kenyon, a Canadian Airways Ltd. pilot based in Winnipeg. Among his qualifications, Hollick-Kenyon had experience in the ‘specialized art’ of starting airplane engines [...]
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January 24, 2012 The Western Canada Aviation Museum, Winnipeg Airports Authority, and Exchange Income Corporation announced today plans for building infrastructure to forever connect Manitoba to its aviation roots, provide new connections with the North and a state of the art vision for the future. The joint announcement sees the creation of a new facility [...]
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