Words of Recognition

 
After I bought my UBF 2 and it was in Rob Lock’s shop in Florida with my UMF 3 I thought it might be fun to eventually own all of the Waco F models.  Initially I thought I would own them serially.  But an honest assessment of my age, and the fact that I am always in a hurry anyway, seems to have sped that up.  Once again, as has happened so many other times, I turned to my friend Barry Branin and said “I need to find an F5.  These things are growing on trees and are pretty rare if you’re talking about an antique and I was (I’d already owned a Waco Classic YMF 5 and didn’t want to repeat that – not that there is anything wrong with them I just wanted an original).  He connected me with the family of a gentleman that had had a UMF 5 restored and gone west but we couldn’t find common ground on value.  He connected me with someone who owned a YMF 5 project but I was second in line.
 
Then one day a young man posted on Facebook that he wanted to sell his YMF 5 project and it turned out that Barry had sold it to him.  I talked to Barry and bought the project almost immediately.  Now, to find someone to restore it.  I discussed it with Craig Sinclair but sadly Craig passed away rather suddenly.  Then I met Hauldo Mendoza and his brother Nando at West Coast Air Creations and Nando agreed to restore the plane.  I’d seen the work they’d done on the Travel Air Sirens and an F2 parked next to me at Airventure and am excited to be working with Nando to bring this airplane back to life.