When the time machine bug bites, it can bite hard, and the resultant hemmorhaging is limited only by the size of the bank account. The urge to share the joy of discovery is strong, be it by writing articles on a web page, letting a friend shoot a rifle he'd only read about in history books before, or by opening your collection of flying warbirds to the public. Having heard folks ask "Wow, do you really shoot those old things?", I am totally sympatico with the sentiment expressed in the article:
Allen and his staff at the Flying Heritage Collection are careful not to call it a museum.I will probably never meet Paul Allen since we just don't run in the same circles, but if I ever did, I know we'd have something to talk about: folks who are into time machines usually do.
"Instead of planes that are just statically displayed for people to see, they're restored to the most authentic artifact that they can be," said Michael Nank, spokesman for Allen and his investment company Vulcan Inc.
The hangar you flew out of was right behind the one I worked out of.
ReplyDeleteI dispatched for SmithKline's corporate flight department there at LZU; if you were there late of an afternoon between '97 and '00, you may have seen my pink & blue Suzuki...
Big internet, small world... :)
"It was up there where a guy across that little patch between the hangars hand-started his Cub at full throttle..."
ReplyDeleteI have a piston from that Cub on my porch; I use it for an ashtray. (That was one of our mechanics...)
Long ago, when I was in the private sector, I had business trip to SoCal.
ReplyDeleteMy boss at the time (and my best friend) was a former USAF pilot and a crazed WWII warbird aficionado. He inisted that we go to a museum in Chino.
Unfortunatley, we got there too late, and the flight museum was shut down. Not content, my friend and I made our way to a dive of a bar nearby.
There we encountered a man (having his dinner) who eventually led us to his hangar.
Turned out, he restored WWII warbirds for a living. And there it was: a restored BF 109 (I believe it was an E variant) in flying condition about to be sent to a client. The plane was found nearly intact in Russia prior to the restoration (the German ace who flew it was shot down, but lived to fight again).
We didn't get to fly it, of course. But we got to look at it, touch it, sit inside the cockpit and work the various controls.
It was a magical evening.
There's just something about those planes....I grew up in the District of Corruption, the old man was a pilot who masqueraded as a corporate attorney 5 days a week, and every weekend was spent either flying or if Wx was lousy, hangar flying with his buddies at National or Andrews. Now and then a rainy Saturday would find us at Silver Hill, and there was always someone working - painstakingly - on a restoration. The stories those planes could tell....
ReplyDeleteFriday nights the National Aviation Club at the Washington Hotel had buffet dinner dances, everyone who was anybody came through at one time or another, and often led to invites to see a plane being restored privately, or, better yet, a chance to go up in one.
Ran into Bob Tullius at a Tyco Air Show in Titusville a few years back, reminisced about his Group 44 days, (we used to race the same tracks, back when I was racing bikes) talked about the Mustang he restored and was flying. My son thought it was "just an airplane," and the sound of that Rolls-Merlin was "just another engine." Heresy if ever I heard it, but he was young then and had a lot to learn.
If time machines are ever invented, I know where I'm going in one....
The interesting thing about Allen's restorations is he's taking authenticity to an unheard of level. He's going 100% for "as delivered from the factory" condition and is eschewing the modern changes of convenience that most warbirds include. That extra 5% of authenticity costs more than 5% extra to achieve.
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