Ramp Report

Chuck Wentworth — well known in the aviation world through his Paso Robles, California, restoration company, Antique Aero, Inc. — keeps a complete set of Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft in his main hangar. Drawn as always to a good bookshelf, I wandered over to admire it during a stopover on our way to the Ala Doble fly-in, and Chuck just grinned: “Well, that’s a story!”

Back in 1996, Chuck owned a single volume. An old gentleman who’d come by to admire the restorations asked, gruffly, whether he’d be interested in “a set of Jane’s” — a complete run from 1909 to 1974, offered for $6,000. (Today the first five editions alone, in good condition, can fetch that much.) Chuck passed the collection along to the late Javier Arango to display among his WWI fighters in Paso Robles.

Arango then sat on the board of the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum. Years later, a curator called Chuck to ask if he wanted some World War I aviation books. Three pallets arrived — and Chuck found himself with an instant WWI library that included the very same Jane’s he had given away. “They’re mine now,” he says with a chuckle.