heritage months 2018

Located in the City of Southold on Long Island’s North Fork, Mattituck Air Base (21N) is the area’s only privately owned, public-use airfield, occupying 18 acres and offering a one 2,200- by 60-foot asphalt runway-in this case, 1/19. Ways to the 1st of the two magnetic headings are conducted around the Excellent Peconic Bay.

Founded in 1946 after Parker Wickham returned from his Earth War II responsibility of sustaining Military Air Corps airplanes at his Mojave Desert foundation, he was supplied 16 acres of his father’s farm for an airfield just after his return household, because, according to his father’s assessment, “There’s no funds in potatoes, anyhow.” Right before the asphalt, the “runway” was almost nothing more than a strip of moved grass.

Apart from its use by non-public pilots who ended up capable to land and foundation their aircraft in close proximity to their North Fork homes, its basic principle, earnings-producing factor was its motor mend and overhaul facility, which was bought in 1984, repurchased by family users 4 a long time later, and offered once more in 1999 to Teledyne-Continental, which renamed it Teledyne-Mattituck Providers on November 9 of that year.

As 1 of the northeast’s longest set up piston motor overhaul repair service retailers, it operated as a subsidiary of Teledyne Technologies, Inc., leasing the building from the Wickham spouse and children. It was subsequently obtained by China-based AVIC Worldwide, at which time it was renamed Mattituck Providers, utilizing 70 at a time all through its peak, or some 350 for each annum, and was dependable for at least a dozen engines for every 7 days, or extra than 500 for every 12 months.

Continental Motors shown its functions as “engine overhauls designed to factory support tolerances factory engine revenue and set up experts main powerplant and airframe servicing propeller maintenance and restore your in-stock supply for sections 50-hour, 100-hour, and annual inspections inspection restore systems and gasoline technique calibration and changes.”

For the 12 months finished on September 27, 2007, the solitary-strip Mattituck Airport averaged 33 actions for each working day, or 12,200 for each yr, and counted 32 single-motor dependent aircraft.

Just after Parker Wickham passed in 2011, he ceded possession to his son, Jay, and his spouse, Cyndi, who preserved and operated the airfield for five several years. But a drop in common aviation due to its ever-mounting expenditures, leaving only a handful of airplanes even now centered there, and the closing of the maintenance store in the summer time of 2012, still left him small choice but to provide the airport 4 yrs afterwards, an intention he introduced on June 3, 2016. Due to the fact of highly-priced repairs, its fuel tanks experienced by now been offered to Albertson Maritime, Inc., of Southold.

The Continental Motors’ shop itself, shut soon after four a long time of declining normal aviation business enterprise and its inability to keep on being worthwhile with two independent amenities, was built-in with its Fairhope, Alabama, plant.

“Really bluntly, I consider the two of us and Lycoming have carried out a good task of pointing out the benefit of manufacturing unit options and that has built a contribution across the board to the decrease there,” according to Rhett Ross, Continental Motors’ CEO. “It was not an effortless conclusion, but that facility has been marginal for at least the 50 % 10 years.”

All 20 remaining personnel ended up laid off.

Although the City of Southold deemed the obtain expense-prohibitive and its revenue potential nominal, “saviors” arrived in the kind of Paul Pawlowski and Steve Marsh, partners in the Hudson Metropolis Financial savings Financial institution venture on Key Highway in Mattituck. Advising current pilots to eliminate their aircraft by September 30 of 2016, they supposed to excavate the runway and demolish all structures, with the exception of the carriage home, the car barn, and the latest hangars, but if not retain the airfield as it experienced been.