The trip down took a little longer then expected. I'm with my father in his camper and we had a blowout on Friday. We called the local service company and it took them three hours to get to us, due to an accident that blocked traffic. So that put us behind and then the next day we started getting intermittent ABS and brake failure lights. We were pretty sure that the brake sensor on the rear axle where we had the blowout got damaged, so we stopped Monday morning at a big Ford dealership to have that checked out. That's what it was so we sat most of the day at the dealer waiting for that to get fixed.So late Monday we pulled into the airshow and set up to enjoy the next few days of watching planes and not traveling anywhere.
Sun 'n' Fun is so great I almost thought I'd died and gone to Heaven. In fact, I met a real angel, though I guess times are tough everywhere and she'd had to take a job selling real estate at a fly-in community (www.heavenslanding.com of course). Unfortunately I'm not here to buy anything so I had to move on. It's probably a good thing I don't have any money in my bank account other then what I'd saved for this trip. It would be far too easy to drop a fortune without thinking. As my dad says, the only thing it takes to keep an airplane flying is money.Most of you reading this are long time customers of Pilotwear & Diecast Airplane and know that I like general aviation (GA) planes a lot, though it is very difficult to find pre-made models of GA planes unless they are the high-end mahogany airplanes. But, I'm happy to share with you highlights of my trip as, really, airplanes of any kind are fun whether they are warbirds, airliners, or hang gliders and the people you meet in aviation are, almost universally, great and have plenty of stories to tell.
Since it is a GA event, the vendors with their displays set up are mostly business planes, such as the Cessna, Socata, and Beechcraft booths, small private planes, such as Cessna, Columbia, Cirrus, and Piper, and the new hope for the industry light sport airplanes, LSA, from currently 51 different manufacturers. These LSA models sure look like a lot of fun, especially on floats! Anybody got an extra 200 grand I can borrow? (Photo of AirCam on floats)Okay, so I can't buy a plane, but I can talk and listen. This is the real treat here. Having my dad along does help. He flew B-25s, C-46s, and the B-36 back in the 50s, then had a career as a corporate pilot and he loves having new people to tell his story to. A young women, working the Jeppesen booth had to have her picture taken with a real B-36 pilot. But sometimes even dad is wowed by the people we meet. Having breakfast one morning we sat next to another older gentleman. When asked what he fle
w, he nonchalantly said, "oh, F-84's, the U-2, and the SR-71." I almost fell out of my seat. I mean how many pilots actually ever got to fly the SR-71 (93 it turns out) and here he is sitting next to us at breakfast. Talk about stories to tell, and we listened enraptured for quite a while. (Photo of Pat Halloran, SR-71 pilot on left, and Richard Howland, B-36 pilot on right.)Then there are the regular line-up of aviation celebrities. I got Patty Wagstaff's autograph on a poster of hers and will get that framed and hung up in the office as soon as I get home. And there was a great evening talk given by retired General Dan Cherry who just last year had tracked down the pilot of the Mig-21 he shot down in Vietnam. These two have become great friends and are currently touring the US giving talks about their experiences and working on helping Vietnam vets with their story of reconciliation at a personal level with a former enemy. The actual dogfight was detailed on the history channel dogfight series and is a fascinating and detailed account.
Our final stop before heading back was the Fantasy of Flight museum. This museum is the personal collection of Kermit Weeks. (Sigh, why couldn't I have inherited a Texas oil fortune?) It's a great museum, but it also has the addition of a lake on the property and they were hosting the seaplane portion of Sun 'n' Fun. I haven't been around seaplanes much, but on a 90 degree Florida day the idea of throwing out the anchor and going for a quick dip in the lake sure sounds fun. (Are there alligators in the lake?) (Photo Spitfire Mk ? - Clipped wings, can anybody tell me the exact model?)
Though there were no diecast vendors at this show, I did find some new products to add to our retail stores. Look for a new line of mahogany planes coming soon and new t-shirts, as well. In the meantime check out some of my show photos at
Though there were no diecast vendors at this show, I did find some new products to add to our retail stores. Look for a new line of mahogany planes coming soon and new t-shirts, as well. In the meantime check out some of my show photos at
Thanks for reading,
Steve Howland,
2 comments:
Wow, great post, almost as good as being there. I wish I could have heard some of those SR-71 stories!
I think the picture on your blog is of a Spitfire LF IX E. LF (low fighter) because of the clipped wings, MK IX because of the large, but not Griffin sized symetrical air scoops, and this was the last 4 bladed Spitfire to have a rounded tail. Some late model MK IX's had a cut down rear fuselage. I think this model was actually the prototype for the bubble conopy. I think this is an E model because that looks like a "universal wing" (you probably know that letters at the end indicate wing type) because of the twin cannons on each wing, short one inboard.
Just a guess, but I think a good one.
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