Sonoma County’s Wings Over Wine Country grounded for 2017

Sonoma County’s roaring, neck-craning Wings Over Wine Country air show has been grounded for 2017.

Leaders of the hosting Pacific Coast Air Museum, located at the Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport, expect to relocate their vintage airplanes and other exhibits to an adjacent location inside the airport fence next year. They said it won’t be possible for their members to make that move and also pull off an air show.

“We don’t have the resources to do it,” said Jim Sartain, president of the volunteer-run museum.

Sartain and PCAM president-elect CJ Stephens said that instead of an air show in 2017, the organization plans a large open house with static displays and other attractions focused on piquing the interest of children and youth in aviation. There may also be a classic car show.

“It’s going to be as active as we can make it,” said Sartain, a Santa Rosa real estate agent.

Both he and Stephens, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel who worked 27 years as late developer Hugh Codding’s pilot, said the museum intends to bring back the two-day air show in 2018.

PCAM’s collection of historic warbirds and civilian aircraft has been located for more than a quarter-century on the southeast edge of the airport, at North Laughlin Road and Becker Boulevard.

The primary features of the leased piece of county-owned property are the old, metal-sheathed building that serves as the museum visitors’ center and the unpaved lot on which most of the aircraft are parked. There’s also a circular, concrete pad that supports the F-15A Eagle fighter jet that was the first to scramble to New York City after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

For years, museum members have sought to move off the dirt lot and onto the paved parcel that is just north of the existing PCAM site. The dominant feature of the museum’s prospective new home is the large, arched, open-ended Butler hangar.

One of only two major structures that remain from the airport’s days as a World War II Army training field, the Butler hangar made the movies in 1963, after stunt pilot Frank Tallman flew a small Beech 18-D airplane through it in “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

The air museum is in negotiations with the county to purchase or lease the Butler hangar and also two nearby buildings that were the offices and hangar of the former Dragonfly flight school. Whether PCAM were to buy or lease the buildings, the land would remain in the ownership of the county.

“It’s not a done deal yet,” said Sartain. If an agreement is reached to allow PCAM to move, the museum will become responsible for repairing and shoring up the historic but badly decayed Butler hangar. It would become an exhibition and events space.

“We’ve got a lot of grand plans,” Sartain said. PCAM members would launch a capital campaign to appeal for the public’s help in upgrading the hangar and converting the former flight-school property to museum space.

Sartain said PCAM and the county are close to agreeing on a contract.

Concurring, Jon Stout, the airport manager, said, “We’re down to the last two items needed for the lease agreement.” He said he couldn’t legally describe those items.

Stout said the county has been supportive of the museum’s desire to move off of the dirt, onto pavement and beneath the Butler hangar. He said “2017 is definitely our goal” for a proposed contract to go to the Board of Supervisors for approval and for the move to occur.

What might become of the property currently occupied by the Pacific Coast Air Museum?

Stout said the county has fielded inquiries from people who might like to create there a corporate-aircraft hangar, a flight school or several small, private hangars.

Prior to this year’s Wings Over Wine Country air show, on Sept. 24 and 25, members of the air museum warned that diminished ticket sales might force them to terminate the show.

Air show director Nancy Heath made an appeal that fans of the show not watch it for free from outside the gate, but support the museum by buying tickets and coming inside.

Though paid attendance was down again this year, Sartain said sponsorships and concession sales made for “one of our most profitable air shows in a long time.”

It was also one of the loudest, boasting ear-splitting performances by the U.S. Air Force’s F-22 Raptor fighter, U.S.Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets and a CF-18 Hornet flown by the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Chris Smith is at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.