Over this weekend we took a little road trip back to TX to pick up our latest automotive acquisition, which will be shown in a future post. Our plan was to ride out to TX on Friday, leaving in the morning after picking up the rental truck, and touching down that evening. We stayed at the hotel we stayed at in Ft Worth when we came down to pick up the 51 Suburban. From here the following morning before going to the guy's house to pick up the car we did a detour to the Ft Worth aviation museum so we can at least say the trip wasn't just strictly business. Unlike the VB aviation museum the planes at this little museum are display pieces, not able to be flown. That's ok because the planes at this place are mostly jets from the cold war era into the more recent years. These planes are restored with regard to the paint and body and other items to make them look more pristine as display pieces. Most of the planes were demilitarized before being brought to the museum but to help better preserve them, volunteers at this museum put in many hours working on these planes to get them ready for display. Many of the jets here are cold ware vintage planes that many afficionados would recognize just by a quick glance of them. Contrary to the WW2 and WW1 vintage planes at VB, these planes are rather large, showing the advancements in aviation technology that required the sizes of the planes to adapt to accommodate the powerplants and weapons systems. We even got a good view of the working area where the volunteers work on the planes, with a couple of projects they're currently working on. It's kind of like looking in an auto restoration shop, seeing how the workers take down the planes and do the different body work and reassembly with new or newly restored components to make these planes look as they did on the airstrips where they were based. Many of the planes here are planes that served through the 60's and 70's probably serving in Vietnam and other conflicts of the era. Some served on carriers while some were at airbases overseas. Seeing these planes would bring back memories in the minds of the vets who have probably flown these very planes. There were a couple of oldies displayed here as well. One of the planes was in a partial state but was opened up around the engine to be able to get a good close look at how the radial engines typically used in these planes were put together. The other plane was a trainer plane that probably served in late WW2 into the post war years. One of the planes that this museum emphasizes is the OV-10 light attack plane. This plane utilized turboprop powerplants which were turbine engines similar to what would've been in choppers but instead of being a turbine jet engine it spun a prop to drive the plane. These prop planes were the next step forward in prop planes as they didn't use the piston engines of their WW2 elders. There are a couple of specimens of this model of plane here. There was another plane called the O2-A Skymaster. The plane was unique in that it had two engines/props, one forward facing and one rear facing with a twin tail setup. I believe this was another 'Nam era plane, similar to the OV-10 and was used for recon and light attack work. There was another twin tailed plane that was in the same class as the O2-A and OV-10 in that it was a light prop plane that was used for both recon and light attack work due to the rocket pods they tended to have mounted under the wings. There were still some more later model planes to see, including a Blue Angels F-18. A couple of these planes still had the markings for the carriers they were assigned to. One of the planes was marked as being on the carrier USS Oriskany, which if anyone who's into military hardware and history would know, was a late WW2 carrier that later served through the Cold War and 'Nam and was later retired and not too long ago met its end in a controlled scuttling off the US coast to serve as an artificial reef. Another little treat was a transport helicopter that was open for people to go inside and even had the cockpit opened up to go inside. Of course the chopper is inoperable but it was still cool to be able to get into the cockpit and have a taste of what a pilot worked with. It was pretty tight quarters and I can only imagine that most pilots were relatively small people and not the oversized people like me. Bailing out would be next to impossible in this craft. After going through what the museum dubbed "The Petting Zoo", we made our way inside to look at the displays of models and placards talking about the aviation history surrounding the B36 Peacemaker bomber that was built in the Convair factory in Ft Worth. The museum also showcased the OV-10 among other planes. There were a lot of cool models of different aircraft and the placards showcased some key figures in aviation history. There was plenty of other hardware that was displayed in the museum as well. We may not have spent a long time in this museum as we did in VB but this place was still cool nonetheless as it had its own flair that made it an enjoyable experience just before we got back down to business and made our way to the seller's house to pick up the newest acquisition to our fleet, a 1946 Ford Coupe sitting on an S10 frame. More on this little number in the next post. Stay tuned.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
May 2023
|