The kick-off dinner was held the evening before the event. Over 30 CorvAIRCRAFTers were in attendance.

Saturday and Sunday, we mustered at 8:30 am in the local EAA chapter's club house. I'm a chapter member of Chapter 1138 and joined the day I received my private pilot's license. The chapter was kind enough to allow us the use of the building.

After a few hours of classroom time, Q&A and such, we braved the cold had headed out to the hangars for some shop time.

Getting 1 on 1 time with William was quite difficult, as there were never any less than a dozen people crowing around, hanging on every word, but William did eventually did get to spend personal time with virtually everyone. (William is shown centered, wearing his fashionable orange sweatshirt and beige beanie)

Richard Allen (to the right of center, in a brown jacket) was the first to run an engine. Just after class on Saturday morning, he fired up his 3100 Big Boy. It made a lot of noise! From 30' away I could feel the ground shake.

A small technical note: Richard Allen's 3100cc engine was one of the original 12 kitted by Bob Sutcliffe. This batch includes Mark Langford's motor, William's,  Joe Horton's and OneSkyDog's. Since Jeff purchased Bob's business, he's made even more kits. Examples of Jeff's work would be John Monday's engine, which was partially assembled at the College, and Dan Weseman's, which was delivered to him at the College, and Gordon Alexander's, which he's assembling under William's supervision at his hangar in Florida.

Richard had some difficulty with his Aero Carb, but when it was running, it was impressive. To the far left in this photo, also in orange, is Jeff Ballard of SC Performance, who did the Big Boy conversion for Richard.

DJ's engine.

I don't have a photo of any of DJ's runs, except the grand finale. DJ took the time to try different props on different engines. His prop ( a Tennessee Prop 66x29) on my engine stand made for a lot of thrust! I almost couldn't breathe behind it.. at idle!  DJ's prop, which would turn 2650 on his engine, turned 2800-2850 on Richard's Big Boy. Although all I could get out of Mike Fortunato 164 on my test stand (with my prop) was 2450 RPM, DJ put my 52x56 Sterba on his engine and spun it up to 2800! The results of DJ's prop on my engine stand were inconclusive, as I was still having problems with the carb when I ran it. In fact, the intake system iced up when I ran DJ's prop to push my truck to the run-up area. Richard's prop was not marked with diameter nor pitch, and it was not compatible with DJ's safety shaft, so it was never run on DJ's engine.

DJ's dad, David Vegh, brought his engine too. They got William's hub with out anodizing, and had it anodized red.

Local Hanford CORSA guru Harold Eigenman brought out all his Corvair vehicles one at a time. A huge hit with the gang was the Rampside. We see Harold giving Grace Ellen a ride. Harold also brought out has matching "early", as well as his Corvair powered VW Microbus. 

John and Jean Kearney drove from Fernley, NV to take apart a few engines. Jean hung in there with the best of us, totally ready for the event, as at one time she was an F4 crew chief. Jean won an award for service above and beyond the call of duty, and received one of the $25 gift certificated donated by Lon Wall of Corvair Underground.

DJ and his father David received the other 2 gift certificates Lon sent us.

William braving the cold outdoors, speaking with KR2S builder John Monday.
In the foreground is Pietenpol owner David Cleveland.

Darrell Jones, Sonoma CA, owns one of the most famous Corvair powered airplanes, the Pfeifer Sport, built 25 years ago by West Coast aircraft legend Joe Pfeifer and featured in a long article in Sport Aviation circa 1980. Darrell also brought his engine in so that we could go through it. That's DJ in the background.

On Saturday we worked till about 6:30 pm. Joe Hemmer is shown here working outside on his own workbench. Shortly after this photo, we departed for an excellent dinner in the neighboring city of Visalia. We had approximately 30 people in attendance. The awards were presented after dinner. After dinner, about a dozen of us returned to work in the hangar till 1:30 a.m. This included Jeff Ballard from SC Performance.

Sunday was pretty much the same as Saturday. Actually the stuff I wrote about the propeller swap happened Sunday, not Saturday. We met at the EAA clubhouse and had donuts and coffee for a few hours while William did Q and A, then back to the workshop to finish wrenching on engines. Lunch on Saturday was presented by out very own John Moyle (Sonex builder) who delivered 16 pizzas, of which 4 were left over for Sunday brunch. Dragonfly owner John Mason was kind enough to keep us in donuts and coffee.

We even managed to do some scientific experiments. Here we did some tuft testing of my head, just to make sure is was laminar flow, and would not cause me any undue drag or buffeting when I fly the open cockpit Smith Miniplane.

Note that the engine stand had been converted to gravity feed.

It was really difficult trying to get a photo of all 3 engines running, and all 3 operators, but this is the best photo I have available. Click the image to view a larger version. We ran all 3 engines WOT for at least 3-4 minutes. I'm not sure which was louder, the 3 roaring engines, or the cheers and applause afterwards, produced by the dozen or more hard core alumnus, who stayed late, well after the official ending of Corvair College V, to witness the tri-motor finale.

...and here they are, smiles not posed for the photo, but left over from seeing and hearing the 3 engines run.
This photo too can be enlarged by clicking it. At any given time, we had 3-4 times this many people participating in the activities. The diehards who stayed for the Corvair College V Group Photo Sunday are, from Left in Front:

Carl Lekven, Richard Allen, Gene Hubbard, Bob Rhodes, Doug Blackburn, Dan Branstrom (kneeling), Bob Bernier, Dan Weseman, Pat Panzera, John Moyle (behind Pat P), Pat Deitch, Pat Lorie, Gaines Fulghum, David Vegh, Clint Brown and Don Lawrence.

In Back, standing on the test stand trailer, from the left: D.J. Vegh, William Wynne and Grace Ellen.

As many people know, a lot of aviation events thin out early on the last day, but several guys commented that we had most people stay until mid-afternoon on the last day. William was impressed with this because many of these people had very long drives to return home.

After everyone had left, those of us who were "local" stayed around and helped Don Lawrence finish his engine. In this photo, William is installing a stud in the case, after installing a HeliCoil supplied by local Corvair guru Harold Eigenman. It was fortunate that Harold had the parts, as Hanford is a small town, and it's not too likely that I'd be able to find the kit out in town at 8:30 pm on a Sunday. Looking over William's shoulder is Clint Brown, an F-18 Super Hornet mechanic stationed at the near by Lemoore Naval Air Station. Across the bench is fellow EAA chapter 1138 member, Gaines Fulghum.

William and Grace had been in Hanford for 4 days by the close of Corvair College V. The entire time they were visiting "sunny" California, they were stuck in foggy Hanford. Although the visibility here was great, the ceiling was 300'-1500' with out a sign of visible sunlight. So on the Monday after CCV, we drove to the central coast and got some sun.

...and a little bit of sunset too.