This half-hour episode of Made in Maine is guaranteed to “fly” right by, as we look at Maine companies that do more business over the state than in it. Lou McNally and crew host the show from Penobscot Island Air in Rockland, which has served literally as a lifeline for residents living on islands off the coast, bringing them groceries, medications, mail and even serving as a medi-vac plane. Owner and President Kevin Waters started the business -- which operates “all day, every day” when the weather permits -- in 2004 after a company that had been serving islanders’ needs simply decided to stop serving them. These island residents banded together and donated $17,000 in money they had collected, giving it to Waters with no strings attached. Since then, Penobscot Island Air has grown to a fleet of four single-engine Cessnas, flown by Waters and other pilots who’ve flown in the military and in the Alaskan bush country.
Then it’s off to Midcoast Air in Auburn, owned and operated by Maurice Roundy literally out of his front yard. Roundy and Bob Gilbert, a retired Air Force mechanic, are restoring 3 Lockheed Constellations (also known in military parlance as a C-121) for an airplane museum in Florida. Only a few feet away from these planes is Roundy’s house, with a second floor added that has the distinct appearance of a radio control tower. For anyone who’s ever seen cars up on blocks in a Maine front yard -- and who hasn't? -- it’s quite another thing to see a yard containing three planes that used to serve as jets for TWA.
And finally we head to Limestone and visit Telford Group, a high-tech aircraft maintenance and development company that, ironically, is developing and refining an older form of airborne vehicle – a blimp. This blimp (or “airship,” as the company calls it) is being designed and built as an unmanned vehicle prototype that can be operated remotely using a laptop computer. It’s being built in one of the old B-52 hangars left vacant when the former Loring Air Force base closed in 1994. Leading the project is Steve Oullette, who oversees the fabrication of parts for the airship out of sheet metal and fiberglass. This prototype could one day have meteorological, law enforcement and possibly even military applications.
