My old friend, John Taylor, used to run the NASA Public Affairs shop at the Space Center in Huntsville, Alabama, but I think he got restless and moved west. The quintessential airport lounger, John apparently has found a home at a little airport near Park City, Utah. What follows is the first of what I hope will be many "Letters From the West."

Russ McDonald and Lynn Oswald lounged in plastic chairs in front of a row of hangars and looked out across the runway while they chatted. In the distance they could see red and orange patches beginning to color the Wasatch Mountains on the west side of Utah's Heber Valley. It was beginning to look like fall.

A standard flying day at the Russ McDonald Heber Valley Airport can look a lot like an Oshkosh air show. But at this point Russ and Lynn (right) were through flying for the day. The crowd of onlookers had departed and they could just relax and enjoy the late afternoon calm.

Not that flying is work for these two, mind you. In the hangars immediately behind them sat Russ's North American P-51D Mustang fighter,his Pitts Special aerobatic biplane, and Lynn's North American AT-28 Trojan trainer/attack bomber.

For Russ and Lynn, like so many other pilots at Heber Valley Airport, flying is simply a way of life. And these two retired airline pilots have the skills and the machines to make life here pretty good.

At Heber, Russ and Lynn are the rule rather than the exception. This small airport is home to an amazing group of aviation enthusiasts and a most unusual collection of airplanes. If you were to browse through the hangars you would also find such items as a MiG-15 jet fighter,a WWII T-6 Texan trainer, a Yak 52 trainer, a Strikemaster jet fighter-bomber, a Provost jet trainer and Ed Strauchen's immaculate 1942 Boeing-Stearman biplane.

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