During a Dec. 19, 2024, ceremony at Pearson Field Airport (KVUO) in Vancouver, Washington, pilot, machinist, and airplane builder Harmon Lange received the highest honor given by the FAA, the Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award.
Joseph Mollahan, FAA FAASTeam Program Manager, presented the award to Harmon during a ceremony held at one of the airport’s hangars.
Pilots with 50 or more years of flying experience qualify for the Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award, starting from the date of their first solo flight. Harmon soloed on April 2, 1960, in an Aeronca Champ, and earned his private pilot certificate just two months later.
At the time, Harmon was an Airman First Class in the U.S. Air Force where he worked in the machine shop at Castle Air Force Base in Atwater, California. After leaving the military, he soon added his commercial pilot license, thanks to financial aid provided by the GI Bill. He spent nearly 30 years working with United Machine and Enstrom Helicopters making helicopter parts.
In his spare time, Harmon blended his love of flying and creating parts and completed his first homebuilt airplane in 1970. Over the following decades, he built five more airplanes, the most recent a Van’s Aircraft RV-9A.
In 1974, Harmon launched his own machine shop, Langaire Aircraft Parts, and he ended up becoming the manufacturer of landing gear legs for a variety of light airplanes, including all Van’s Aircraft models since 1969. Langaire Aircraft has made more than 30,000 landing gear legs.
“Harmon’s selfless contributions to aviation were not limited,” wrote pilot Andrew Meislin in his recommendation letter to the FAA. “When you are with Harmon, you notice he is extremely humble, yet he is passionate about sharing what he learned from his past aviation milestones and blemishes and he makes it a point to impart the wisdom of being a safe and professional aviator.”
At the ceremony, Harmon praised the friends he has made during his career in aviation.
“When you learn to fly, the most important thing that you can learn is not in the manuals, it’s about the people you get to hang out with,” he said. “And there’s nothing written in manuals about this but it turns out that the airplanes are a means by which we gather our friends.”
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