Aerospace Monitoring

(AP) — Austin Ballard steadied himself on a wooden ladder and threaded a cable capped with a tiny camera lens into a cylinder on one of the Boeing 247's engines. The all-metal, twin-engine plane is in fine shape for the short hop from Paine Field to Boeing Field in Seattle, where the Museum of Flight plans to put it on permanent display. On the morning of March 31, 1931, Transcontinental and Western Air Flight 599 took off from Kansas City, Missouri, headed for Wichita, the first stop on the…