MVLS I Spy Oral History Interview

Schenectady County Airport, Glenville, NY
Audio Excerpts | Current Photo | Historic Picture

Transcript of audio excerpts

Interviewers: Megan Purtell & Carter Sullivan
Speaker: Leonard Porter

My name is Megan Purtell. I'm in 9th grade at Scotia-Glenville High School.

My name is Carter Sullivan. I'm in Lincoln elementary and I'm in 5th grade and today's date is April 7, 2001.

My name is Len Porter. I'm a retired teacher from Burnt Hills. I do tours and teach classes at the museum. I've been a member of Empire State Aerosciences Museum from 1986, when I first joined we didn't have an Airplane and we didn't have a building.

BEGINNINGS OF THE AIRPORT

Sullivan: Can you tell us about the beginning of the airport?
Porter: Yes, I was telling somebody here this morning that it's the first private airport in the United States. A group of pilots wanted a place to land their planes so they bought the land and then they began building barns to put their planes in, and so it was a private, it wasn't built by the State of New York, it wasn't built by Schenectady County - now it's owned by Schenectady County, but it was a private airport.

NATIONAL GUARD

Purtell: Are there any special events that you remember about the airport?
Porter: Well, I wasn't here when the airport was a private airport, it became part of Schenectady County - I was here back when the first National Guard airplanes began flying out of here and they used to fly jets. And that was kind of interesting, they made a lot of noise - and I had never seen. It was the Sabre jet. It was during the Korean War or right after the Korean War and then they went to big four engine planes like they fly now, so there's been quite a change.

The National Guard base is still there. And of course, these are the people that flew to the South Pole to rescue that doctor. And they had to wait till the temperature warmed up to 50 below zero before they could make that flight.

JONES AIRCRAFT

Sullivan: Can you tell us about the Jones Aircraft Company?
Porter: Well, it was an airplane company that was here in Schenectady and I don't know when they went out of business. But about 1937 and '38 they made a beautiful little two-seated sport airplane which was a very nice design and it looked like it should be a very successful airplane.

EMPIRE STATE AEROSCIENCES MUSEUM

Purtell: Are there any special different kinds of airplanes?
Porter: Well, we have 30 airplanes at ESAM - Empire State Aeroscience Museum.
We have a 1910 Curtis Wright Fisher and we have a Tomcat, an F14, that's the range of planes that we have, from 1910's right up to the modern day.

We have a lot of people repairing airplanes. See, we get given airplanes, sometimes, and then they have to be fixed, like our B26. We've had that for four years and we're still working on it, to repair all the damage and put it all back together again.

Purtell: What were the museum buildings used for before the museum?
Porter: All right, right before we bought it, it was Donovan's Machine Shop Factory. They did machine repair. But originally. it was the place where they designed and built jet engines for General Electric - in other words, it was their machine shop - that was one of the reasons we wanted that building for our museum, because it was where the General Electric made a lot of those early jet engines, and the F4 fighter was the first plane we got because that was the plane that the engine went into, and it made it the first mass-produced, supersonic jet. And because the engine was made right here, we wanted an engine and we wanted and F4 - which was the first two acquisitions that we had .

Purtell: How long would you say, or like how big are most of the planes that you have?
Porter: Well, they go from a C47, which is a paratrooper plane which is like an airliner, it's an old DC3, an army version, down to a little one called the Starlight which only weighs 250 pounds, made of plastic, has a snowmobile engine on it.

BUSH PILOTS

Purtell: What do you know about the Bush pilots?
Porter: Well, the Bush pilots. We have an exhibit over at ESAM called the Bush Pilots. They flew into the Adirondacks, to take people fishing or to fly people to their summer camp, there were large numbers of them, we have models of their planes.

A lot of times they flew - they were float planes - they landed on lakes, there aren't too many airports in the Adirondacks - but they would fly a canoe on the floats of the plane and when they got the people to the lake where they were gonna fish, they would transfer to the canoe where they would fish all day and they would come back and pick them up at night, or maybe next week.

 

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