Corona Airport

Been thinking a lot about Corona Airport Lately. Spent some of the best years of my life right there at the airport. Lived in my hangar/shop there for three years. All my bestest friends were there, Erik, Mike, Joe, Margret, Penski, Gordie, Dan, Jimmy, Eddie, and a couple dozen more... This is where I built my first aeroplane, a highly modified Smith Miniplane that I terrorized the local community with. I had a small aircraft maintenance shop there, business was great... too great. I was working 17 hours a day 7 days a week towards the end.

Corona Airport was like Oshkosh every weekend, behind the hangar doors were just about every kind of aeroplane imaginable. There would be a takeoff and landing about every minute. I watched friends get killed there, three that I can recall, one was Chrissys flight instructor who tried to make the 180 back to the runway after an engine failure. Manx Kelly was killed when he started an invered spin at 4000 feet then tried the vertical 8 from the bottom... hit way over the never-exceed speed and the tail came off his Acroduster. The most scary one was Eddy Torres who buzzed my hangar on Easter Sunday 1980, he was so low he hit a light pole and smashed into an Ercoupe. I watched him burn to death in his Citabria while standing there in just my skivies (no way I could get to him). There were other friends that died in crashes too, 11 total over the years I was there. When Cindy Rucker died at an Airshow up in the high desert I quite doing stupid things like flying under bridges, aileron rolls all the way around the pattern, stuff like that...

One time I was working in the shop and I heard a load bang and looked outside to see a yellow P51 Mustang trailing smoke in the sky above Corona.. it landed and cruised right up to a spot close to my shop (engine dead) - holly shit - Bob Hoover. He used my telephone to call for help.. within 15 minutes a helocopter was there for him. He left the Mustang there for a week while his crew changed the engine. I was just finishing up rebuilding a Cassett Racer which was the same color as his Yellow Mustang so I rolled it under the mustang wing and took a picture... I'm gonna go thru all my pics and see if I can find it.

Anyway, that was Corona back in the 70s and early 80's I sure do miss it....