Sunday, August 02, 2009

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Each year we take the boat out to watch the Blue Angels perform at Seattle’s Seafair. This year I also watched the festivities from the pits of the Unlimited Hydro races.Enjoy the photos.

You can view high resolution photos here: Digital Quixote.

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Saturday, August 09, 2008

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Last weekend was Seafair Weekend in Seattle. Among other events, the Blue Angels flew a wonderful show over Lake Washington. Have a look at these pictures and see more in high res versions on my blog by clicking here.

Not all the angels at the show were Blue Angels. Click below for the rest of the story ...

Click here for the rest of the story ...

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Friday, June 27, 2008

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A week ago a friend of mine and I took ourselves off to Paul Allen’s Flying Heritage Museum. He has collected about 15 WW II aircraft, restored them to flying condition, and displayed them in his new museum. A couple of weekends a month, they are flown to keep them in working order. The photo above is a panorama taken inside the museum. The photos below are of some of the more interesting things you’ll see if you go.

One of the things that’s interesting to me is the nose art on these planes. Just below is a caricature of Neville Chamberlin painted on a German Messerschmitt. The German translates roughly to God Punish England. Below Neville is the nose art from a German Rocket plane. It carried only 8 minutes of fuel. It was designed to fly straight up toward bombers overhead firing machine guns. It would race past them on its ascent and then dive past them on the way down again attempting to shoot them down. It had a 50% fatality rate ... which is to say, 50% of its pilots were killed flying it.

Below is a Curtis P-40C Tomahawk ... one of the famous Flying Tigers. It’s interesting because Disney designed the flying tiger fuselage art you see here.

One of the prettiest things in the museum is the propeller on this Curtis Jenny, below.

The Mustang above has 9 kills on its record.

But the record for the most bizarre aircraft has to go to the one below. Germany built V-1 “Buzz Bomb” rockets to attack London. These are similar to today’s cruise missiles but without sophisticated guidance. So even though over 9,000 were fired, only about 5,000 landed anywhere near London. Germany’s answer to better guidance was to put a pilot in them, and fly them over the channel under manual control. When the pilot had them lined up with the target, he would bail out (over enemy territory sure to be captured) and let the plane do the rest. One serious problem!  The cockpit is just in front of the jet intake. As soon as the pilot popped the canopy and started to climb out, he’d be sucked into the engine and killed. These were never successfully flown against London. Duh!

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Saturday, June 21, 2008

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Today, there were three neat WWII vintage war birds at the Seattle Museum of Flight. Above and below, a B-17 bomber.

Besides being able to crawl around inside these, for the princely sum of about $400, you could take a 30 minute ride in them. This specific aircraft flew a mission for each bomb painted on the nose, and shot down a number of German fighters sent to interdict them. Each represented by a swastika painted on the nose.

They also had and flew a B-25, below. This one sank at least one japanese ship and shot down 10 Japanese fighters.

And finally, they had a neat P-51 Mustang. Only 6 Mustangs were made with 2 seats. This was one of the six. and for the princely sum of $2,200, you could buy a 30 minute ride in the Mustang.

This was a cool reminder of the progress aviation has made in the last 60 years. In 1948, the B-17 was about the biggest and baddest aircraft in the skies. This is a dinky little plane compared to a Boeing 747, or an Airbus A-380. It is roughly equivalent to an abacus compared to the super computer represented by, say, the B-2 bomber. The P-51 is more or less a Volkswagen compared to an Audi R8 representing a Stealth fighter. We’ve come a long way baby ... 

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Wednesday, January 16, 2008

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A friend of mine and I took a short trip this week to McMinnville, Oregon to see a piece of aviation history; Howard Hughes’ H-4 Flying Boat nicknamed “The Spruce Goose.” It’s on display at the Evergreen Aviation Museum along with many other historically interesting aircraft. It is the largest wooden aircraft in the world and big by any standard. 3 meters shorter than a Boeing 747, 17 meters wider than an Airbus A-380. It was built of wood because the government contract which funded it specified no materials critical to the war effort (i.e. metal) could be used in its construction. It was to replace shipping as a way to move men and material to Europe during WWII and avoid the threat of U-Boat sinkings. It was flown only once, on November 2, 1947 by Hughes himself. The war and therefore the purpose for the aircraft ended. It was never commercialized. Here are three more pictures of it.

The aviation museum also houses a bunch of interesting flying machines. Below is a P-38 Lightning and the interior of the Mercury-10 Space Capsule.

On our way back, we stopped at the Tillamook Air Museum housed in, you guessed it, Tillamook, Oregon. Frankly, the museum is a disappointment after Evergreen. The most interesting thing is the building itself. It was originally constructed as a hanger for Squadron ZP-33’s 8 K-Class blimps. These blimps, used in anti-submarine warfare, were each 251 feet long and all 8 fit inside the enormous hanger at the same time. The hanger itself is over 1,000 feet long, almost 200 feet high, and almost 3oo feet wide. Big enough to play 6 NFL Football games, at the same time, but sadly no extra room for paying fans. Below are photos of the hangar itself, an A-26 Invader and a vintage MiG.

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