A hobby I've developed in the past few years has been visiting aircraft museums around North America. Here is a brief description of some of the museums I've visited along with a few pictures.
The left picture is the Rutan Voyager, the first aircraft to fly around the world non-stop, unrefueled in December, 1986. It was designed by Burt Rutan and flown by Dick Rutan (Burt's brother) and Jeanna Yeager. The middle picture shows the Hughes R-1 racer, which set a world speed record (352 mph) in September 1935 and a transcontinental speed record in 1937 (7 hours 28 minutes LA to NY). The right picture shows a Link trainer flight simulator, used to train pilots during WW II.
The picture on the left shows some of the aircraft in the collection, including the front half of a B-737, an Aerosonde RPV, an SR-71 Blackbird, Paul MacCready's Gossamer Albatross II, and others. Included in the collection outside the main building are the prototype B-737, B-747, the Presidential 707, and a British Airways Concorde. In the middle is a picture of the instrument panel of the B-737. This is from the B-737 front half seen in the previous picture. On the right is a picture of the interior of a British Airways Concorde. The Concorde is a recent addition to the museum.
The left picture shows one of the first aircraft a visitor sees when entering the museum, a Chance-Vought F-4U Corsair. Other notable aircraft included in the collection are an SR-71 Blackbird, the Space Shuttle Enterprise, the prototype Boeing 707 (Dash 80), and an Air France Concorde. In the middle is a picture of the nose of the Boeing B-29 "Enola Gay", which dropped the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan in August 1945. The picture on the right is an overall view of only half of the total collection! How many airplanes can you find in this picture?
Photography Notes: All images on this page were taken with a
Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 318 digital camera at 640x480 resolution.
Click here to go to Ed's Aircraft Museum web links.
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