Blue Ribbon residents are bound by pilot-friendly covenant rules that explicitly allow airplane takeoffs and landings and prohibit noise complaints. But the covenant bars using the airstrip “for commercial purposes.”

The homeowners board heard complaints about the number of flights Mason was conducting causing disruption during the summer. Mason then moved the flights to the nearby Sequim Valley Airport.

However, Mason’s wife Marilyn continued to give clients preflight ground training at the airplane hangar beside their Blue Ribbon house.

The training ran about three hours before the wing-walkers went up. They learned the footholds and handholds used to climb across the airframe, and how to secure the harness on top.

The dispute intensified when the board in 2022 sued the Masons to try to stop them from operating out of the location entirely.

In filings, the board expressed concern that it might be found liable if an accident were to kill a wing walker. No insurance company will cover wing walking.

In a separate setback that forced another move for the business, last summer the FAA rescinded permission for Mason to fly where he had habitually conducted the wing walking flight: a little offshore over the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

The FAA received noise complaints from residents along the shore and withdrew permission to use that area, which it controls because it’s close to airways where other planes regularly fly.

So Mason then switched to flying inland, a few miles south of the airport between the shoreline and the Olympic Mountains, away from any airways so that no FAA permission was required.

But that drew the ire of people living in the new flight area, because the Stearman is a very noisy plane.

...continued

©2024 The Seattle Times. Visit seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.