Come Fly With Me

When asked how he became a pilot, Ola Vestad said, “I like to be like a bird.” With a twinkle in his blue eyes, he explained how he was ski jumping in his native Norway by age 5, and as a young adult he parachuted for the military. It’s not difficult to understand why he became a pilot.
Tom McMahon, a retired captain for United Airlines, learned to fly as a teenager from Warren Anderson, a Lower Valley crop-duster. “For my 50th birthday, my family found and bought the plane I’d learned to fly in,” McMahon said. It took him six years to restore the old bird that proudly sits waiting for its next sortie in his Yakima Airpark hangar.
Vestad, McMahon, Dick Hester, John Davis and Harold Johnson were all instrumental in creating the Yakima Airpark, located on the south side of the Yakima airport’s property just off Ahtanum Road. The pilots, some retired from their careers and some still working, wanted to build more than a bunch of airplane hangars. What they hoped to achieve was a place where private pilots could enjoy every aspect of flying with like-minded friends.
But it wasn’t easy.
The first step was finding a piece of property near the airport that provided a taxiway to the runways used by the Yakima Air Terminal. Fortunately, there was some undeveloped property off of Ahtanum Road that included the end of an abandoned WWII runway. Once used by Northwest Airlines, the abandoned runway intersected the airport’s main runway, making the property a perfect fit. After jumping through more than a few bureaucratic hoops, the group eventually secured a lease from the Yakima Airport board.
Then the hard work began.
A part of the old runway was broken up in order to reclaim bare ground.
“Harold Johnson dug a mile of trenches for water, sewer, gas and electric,” McMahon said.  After analyzing other hangar complexes, the group mapped out their own with spray paint after the prep work was finished. Construction began in June 2006. It took eight months to complete the first five units, and the pilots did much of the work themselves, along with a slew of volunteers.
Today, the Yakima Airpark boasts 20 hangars and seven buildings.
The main building serves as a de facto clubhouse for those who own hangars. The first floor has a kitchen and small meeting room. “Every Saturday we put out coffee and doughnuts for the pilots,” Vestad said. The adjacent hangar is often used for large social events, like their annual Christmas party.
A spiral staircase leads up to the tower room, which provides an expansive view of the runways and the Valley beyond. “We come up here and tell lies,” McMahon joked.
But it’s the hangars that truly reflect the personalities of Airpark members. Upon entering Vestad’s, visitors are struck by the beautiful red and white plane parked in front a giant mural by local artist Rick Fuller, depicting the owner flying the same plane near the Cascade Mountains.
In a far corner of the immaculate space, a half-built fuselage sits waiting for its wings. It turns out that many of the Airpark occupants are members of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) and are in the process of building their own airplanes. Vestad said it’s terrific to have access to other pilots who have either built their own planes or are currently involved in the process. The myriad parts meticulously laid out are a testament to the complicated steps it takes to assemble a plane that one day will actually fly.
Local dentist Tommy Holbrook, who learned how to fly from a P51 pilot named Buck Wheat, has been instrumental in getting the Yakima Airpark pilots involved with the community. In October, the group offered 15-minute flying sessions to kids involved in YMCA’s after-school Aspire program. The local EAA has also offered free flights to children in the Valley. “Some of these kids have never seen the Columbia River,” Holbrook said.
But it’s not all community service for Yakima’s “flight jockeys.” This fall, the Airpark sponsored a Poker Run with 12 pilots participating. The aeronautical card game commenced when the planes took off from the Yakima Air Terminal and navigated to five designated airports in Eastern Washington. Upon landing, each team picked up a playing card from a bucket and flew on to the next destination. When they finally returned to Yakima, bragging rights went to the team with the highest hand. The winner got all the entry fees too, but the pilots really didn’t care. They’d won even before their planes had left the tarmac: After all, it was one more chance to fly.