Last Updated on April 25, 2019 by CCAR Staff
Outside Chino’s Planes of Fame Museum the American flag was at half-staff Wednesday, following the plane crash this week that took the life of one of the museum’s pilots.
Chino resident Dave Vopat, 51, was the lone occupant of a 1944 Northrop N9M Flying Wing when it crashed Monday, April 22, in the prison yard of the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco. The National Transportation and Safety Board is investigating what caused the crash of the restored vintage plane. Vopat made no distress call before the plane went down.
The fatal crash occurred just less than two weeks before the museum’s annual airshow, planned to take place May 4 and 5.
“As Dave would have wanted, it’s going to go on as planned,” Harry Geier, the museum’s director of marketing, said Wednesday.
A tribute to Vopat will be added to the museum’s website and he will be honored with a missing man formation flyover during the airshow.
“He’s a fantastic person,” Geier said of Vopat, switching between the present and past tense as he spoke. “He was part of the Planes of Fame family … an all-around good person.”
Vopat had been volunteering at the museum for seven years and had been a pilot since a young age, Geier said. He previously worked as a commercial pilot, according to Geier.
According to Federal Aviation Administration records, Vopat’s certification to fly as an airline transport pilot was renewed on March 13, and he had a medical evaluation the same month, with only a requirement to wear glasses to correct for his nearsightedness noted in his record.
He was authorized to fly both multi-engine airliners and single-engine airplanes, along with several models of experimental aircraft. Vopat was also certified as a flight instructor for single and multi-engine airplanes and rated as a mechanic able to work on both airframes (the mechanical structure of an airplane) and its powerplant.
The Planes of Fame’s N9MB was the only one remaining of four flying wings built for flight testing in 1944. The planes were one-third scale test aircrafts built to develop a long-range heavy bomber. The N9MB had been restored over a 13-year period and flew its first post restoration flight in 1994. It had safely flown several hundred hours since that first flight, according to a museum news release.
Although the cause of Monday’s crash is not yet known, Geier said all the museum’s pilots make safety their highest priority, even if that means occasionally disappointing audiences.
“If, during this airshow, there’s anything the pilot doesn’t think is 100 percent, they just won’t fly that day,” he said.
Geier said Vopat, like other volunteers, loved the museum’s collection of historic military aircraft, especially getting them out of the hangars and into the air.
“To see these aircraft static here,” Geier said, walking through the museum’s main hangar, “it’s like looking at a bald eagle in a cage.”
This year’s show commemorates the 75th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy during D-Day. Twenty World War II veterans will be at the show, Geier said, including some who flew missions on D-Day. The airshow this year will include a D-Day re-enactment that will include ground troops, six models of planes used in the invasion and paratroopers.
The 2019 Planes of Fame Airshow will take place from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on May 4 and 5. The Planes of Fame Air Museum is located at 14998 Cal Aero Drive in Chino. Tickets start at $5, although children 11 and under get in free. Information or to purchase tickets, call 909-597-3722, visit the show’s Facebook page or visit PlanesOfFame.org.
Staff writers Richard K. De Atley and Brian Rokos contributed to this story.
