Expansion planned at antique aeroplane museum

The Western Antique Aeroplane & Automobile Museum (WAAAM) in Hood River, Oregon, has more than 3.5 acres of indoor hangar space — and more is on the way.

The museum opened in 2007, with just under 200,000 square feet of space, all under interconnected buildings. It began with 42 airplanes and 20 automobiles donated by Founder and President Terry Brandt.

Today, the museum is home to about 170 antique airplanes, 210 antique automobiles, and 30 antique motorcycles.

The growth in the collection was mirrored in the growth of the facility. In 2009, a second hangar was added, while a third was built in 2013, and a fourth was added in November 2016.

Everything in the museum has been donated by someone. About a third was donated from Brandt’s personal collection — and he keeps collecting antique aircraft and memorabilia.

That means the museum must grow. Museum officials note they have two more 40,000 to 50,000 square foot buildings on the drawing board they are raising funds for now.

You could say Brandt inherited his love of aviation. His mother and father ran an FBO and flight school at the airport in Marysville, California. His father built between 200 and 300 crop dusters, mostly from Stearmans after World War II, and was particularly fond of soaring gliders.

Brandt learned to fly in a Taylor Cub when he was only 12 years old. He bought his first airplane — a 1938 Piper J-3 Cub — when he was 19. He’s been an avid collector and aviation enthusiast ever since.

In 2006 he surveyed his collection and decided he would have to make a choice: Either have a very large auction or find a way to ensure the collection would survive by building a museum.

“This museum has down-to-earth realistic stuff that taught America how to ride motorcycles, drive cars, and fly airplanes,” Brandt says. “We have 150 flyable airplanes in the museum. Our staff of volunteers keeps everything operational. We fly the airplanes, run the cars, and drive the motorcycles. That’s what has made this place so very, very successful. It’s not a bunch of rusty iron sitting in a dirty building. This is what people like. That’s why people donate their stuff here … because they want it to go somewhere where it is going to be loved, taken care of, and maintained.”

“The museum keeps running with a couple hundred volunteers, 50 of which are day-to-day active volunteers that account for 30,000 to 40,000 volunteer man hours,” Brandt continues. “These days, I fly anything I want, but basically, I’m pretty much semiretired. I do some test flying, but we have a great staff of retired airplane pilots that do the bulk of the flying for the museum.”

Most of the items in the museum are from the United States, he notes.

“We have maybe a hundred really rare items that are the only ones built or only ones left that you might never see anywhere else in the world,” Brandt says. “One example is the one and only surviving flyable 1928 Boeing Model 40C. It was Boeing’s first airliner made to haul passengers. It is a big biplane with a great big radial engine that would haul four passengers in the cabin and 700 pounds of mail.”

There’s also a Model 70 Stearman, which was the one-and-only prototype that the Army and Navy flew and evaluated. A total of 10,680 Stearmans were built for World War II. This one-and-only airplane on display at WAAAM is the prototype of the Stearman Model 75 “Kaydet” biplane, an icon of aviation.