Your Dream plane

Great photos & shared info...  I look for every plane that ever flys over.  The radial engines sure have a mysterious drone to them.  It think their all cool.  Growing up on a farm, I always thought I would grow up to be a crop duster.  If there was one in the area, I was watching.  I would stop cutting hay, shut down the tractor, watch & listen to those birds pullin up and diving into crops.  When I was about 14, I took a ride in a cessna 180 at the local airport.  Frankly I could not stomach it.  Can you say dramamine...  Thats me. 

DC-3/C47

 I still have my pilot license, issued in 1946, private only, never had need for any other.

I have my Decathlon, my wife has a Cessna 152 with an O320 engine.

There are blackbirds on display around the country. In Nebraska at the museum near Ashland that used to be at Offut, in Kansas at the Cosmosphere at Hutchinson, and in Seatle at the Museum of Flight. Those I've visited. There are more.

The skin didn't shrink in flight, it expanded and sealed up the fuel leaks. About the only volume that didn't have fuel were the cockpits, and the air passages to the engines. The engines grew 3/4" in diameter when up to white hot operating temperature. I don't recall how much the aircraft grew but it had to be serious because I know the Chinese steam loco at the Boone and Scenic valley the boiler grows about 3/4" when up to temperature and pressure and its shorter than a Blackbird and running at only 395 degrees, not 900 degrees. It took a hour on the ground to cool off enough that ground crews could approach so I guess the crew had to sit that long to get out.

There are good aircraft museums at Tillimook and McMinnville OR that I hope to visit in a couple months and smaller museums at Vancouver WA, Hillsboro OR (with a couple MIGs) and at Hood River, OR.

There is a good museum at the SE corner of Topeka KS on Forbes Field of WW2 and more recent equipment that mostly looks ready to fly and by the placards, much was flown there on their own or on a hook under a skycrane. And there's a sky crane dripping oil in a hangar. Every engine has a drip pan under it with an accumulation of oil.

Then there's the National Air and Space museum in Virginia that I've not seen and the other one at Wright-Patterson in Ohio. This year I'm traveling west, maybe next year.

Gerald J.

I have my pilot license also. Have Cessna Skyhawk and J-3 Kitten ultralight. Never cared to get instrument rating, it's no fun flying if the weather is that bad. Frank/Mi.

Dream airplanes? You'll need to be more specific, LOL. Mine are US WWII war birds: 

Edited by clovis - 01 Mar 2011 at 11:28pm

I do like the Corsair and I forgot about the F6F Hellcat which is another of my favorites and I think I'd rank it as maybe the best fighter in WWII. These look like land based aircraft that the Marines would have but most were carrier based. There are just so many good war birds in that era that I just can't pick one. 

JohnCO wrote: Speaking of the fuel leaks on an SR71, a friend was in the Air Force back in the late 60's and worked in intelligence.  One of his jobs was to unload the film out of the plane after a mission.  He tells of going out to a plane and a guy is welding something on the underside of the plane with a torch of some sort.  Fuel is dripping out of various spots into buckets.  He asks the guy if he isn't concerned about blowing everything up.  Guy says "Nah, this s**t doesn't burn easily." He then stuck the torch into one of the buckets of leaked fuel and it just hisses like water.  Another friend flew one once, usually flew F16's but got the chance to fly a SR71.  From the description of what was done to his body before he got into the plane, something similar to getting a colonostrephy  (sp) I don't think I would want that opportunity.

Edited by TexasAllis - 02 Mar 2011 at 8:07am

Dakota Dave wrote: B-52H Nothing like 550 knots 500 agl in a half a million pound airplane. I was a flying crewchief on one for 15 years.  any where in the world nonstop. the 36hr round the world flights did get old.

B-58 Hustler

How about a P80 Sooting Star with an ALLIS CHALMERS J36 Jet Engine?

Lonn if my Dad was still alive he'd like your reply. He was a F6F Hellcat fighter pilot and he said for sure it was the best fighter in the war but it never got the recognition which it so deserved. And believe me he was adamant on that subject! Dana

This is he actual production video from Lockheed Martin for the SR-71....Talk about COOL!
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I love 'em all...

but mine would hafta be a Grumman Albatross!!!