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Located in the Town of Southold on Very long Island’s North Fork, Mattituck Air Base (21N) is the area’s only privately owned, public-use airfield, occupying 18 acres and presenting a one 2,200- by 60-foot asphalt runway-in this circumstance, 1/19. Methods to the to start with of the two magnetic headings are conducted over the Excellent Peconic Bay.
Established in 1946 after Parker Wickham returned from his Earth War II responsibility of sustaining Military Air Corps airplanes at his Mojave Desert base, he was supplied 16 acres of his father’s farm for an airfield after his return house, because, according to his father’s evaluation, “There is no cash in potatoes, anyhow.” Prior to the asphalt, the “runway” was nothing at all extra than a strip of moved grass.
Aside from its use by private pilots who ended up capable to land and base their aircraft near their North Fork properties, its basic principle, profits-making ingredient was its motor restore and overhaul facility, which was sold in 1984, repurchased by family users four several years later, and marketed again in 1999 to Teledyne-Continental, which renamed it Teledyne-Mattituck Expert services on November 9 of that yr.
As one of the northeast’s longest founded piston engine overhaul restore retailers, it operated as a subsidiary of Teledyne Systems, Inc., leasing the building from the Wickham spouse and children. It was subsequently purchased by China-centered AVIC International, at which time it was renamed Mattituck Services, utilizing 70 at a time all through its peak, or some 350 per annum, and was accountable for at the very least a dozen engines for each week, or a lot more than 500 per year.
Continental Motors shown its functions as “motor overhauls built to manufacturing facility assistance tolerances manufacturing facility motor income and set up experts important powerplant and airframe servicing propeller upkeep and repair your in-stock source for areas 50-hour, 100-hour, and once-a-year inspections inspection mend systems and gasoline technique calibration and adjustments.”
For the 12 months finished on September 27, 2007, the one-strip Mattituck Airport averaged 33 movements for every working day, or 12,200 for each yr, and counted 32 single-motor based plane.
Just after Parker Wickham handed in 2011, he ceded possession to his son, Jay, and his wife, Cyndi, who preserved and operated the airfield for five yrs. But a decrease in standard aviation because of to its ever-climbing fees, leaving only a handful of airplanes continue to based there, and the closing of the maintenance store in the summertime of 2012, left him minimal alternative but to offer the airport four years afterwards, an intention he introduced on June 3, 2016. Simply because of high-priced repairs, its gas tanks had previously been presented to Albertson Maritime, Inc., of Southold.
The Continental Motors’ store alone, closed just after 4 many years of declining normal aviation enterprise and its incapacity to continue to be profitable with two individual amenities, was integrated with its Fairhope, Alabama, plant.
“Incredibly bluntly, I feel the two of us and Lycoming have performed a great job of pointing out the value of factory solutions and that has manufactured a contribution throughout the board to the decline there,” in accordance to Rhett Ross, Continental Motors’ CEO. “It was not an simple selection, but that facility has been marginal for at minimum the 50 % 10 years.”
All 20 remaining staff members were being laid off.
Although the City of Southold deemed the invest in charge-prohibitive and its earnings prospective small, “saviors” arrived in the sort of Paul Pawlowski and Steve Marsh, companions in the Hudson City Discounts Bank project on Main Highway in Mattituck. Advising current pilots to get rid of their plane by September 30 of 2016, they supposed to excavate the runway and demolish all structures, with the exception of the carriage property, the automobile barn, and the most recent hangars, but if not keep the airfield as it had been.
