Florida Panhandle trip Jan, 2008 ---- Pictures

[krlang]

Shannon and I went to FL for a week to peruse the area between Tallahassee and Pensacola. We stayed in Wakulla Springs, Apalachicola, Ft. Walton Beach and Pensacola, returning to TLH for our flight home.

It was a decent Birdwatching trip, Warbirds for me, Songbirds for her.

We even found this guy watching us at St Marks NWR....



While driving past Tyndall, we saw an F-22 landing, and a bunch of F-15 in the pattern.

We stopped into Hurlburt, and walked around the airplanes on display.
The C-123 is getting a facelift, as did the Skyraider. The Helo was new to the display as of December 2007.
It was a rainy overcast FL day......




We stopped into the Armament Museum at Eglin to see the airplanes and use the Facilities. I took only a couple of pics there, there was also an F-15 looking like it was practicing an airshow demo at the airport while we walked about.

We stopped into the Naval Air Museum on that Saturday Morning. What a busy place, there was alot of stuff, to see do and eat. Heres a few pics.






After we left the museum in Pensacola we drove over to Gulf Shores Alabama and had dinner at Lulu's, a rest. owned by Jimmy Buffett's Sister Lucy.

One of the more comical parts of the trip,
We were going to get some dinner on Friday night, I had planned on going to a duelling piano bar in Destin, when we got into the car I turned on my scanner and tuned into the local frequencies, not expecting much on a friday night. A few minutes later I heard a call for "Spooky 41, 7 miles out , inbound to the range, going active". For the next half hour we were driving over every bridge in the area, trying to see the tracers from the AC-130 heading to a target. (There was a paragraph in a tourist guide for the area saying on a clear night you can see the tracers from the gunships) We never saw any, and weather was moving in to the area. Dinner and the show at the place we were headed was a little later than planned, but it was still really cool.

[Steve Nelson]

Interesting...looks like the "Zero" has been repainted. Got any other pics of it?

SN

[Owen Miller]

Two of my favorite places.......NMNA & LuLu's.......did y'all get
as far west as Battleship Park???????

The Zero has been repainted. It went back in the museum
about a month ago.

[krlang]

We did not go to Battleship Park but we were told about it by some locals.

Heres a couple more....

[Fouga23]

Is that the Diemert Zero?

[Owen Miller]

The Zero is the one that was at the USMC museum for a number of years.

krlang, did you see pictires of the Otter and Que Serra serra after
Hurricane Ivan? To truely appreciate those two planes you have
to see what they looked like after the storm.

Too bad you got that close to the battleship and didn't get to see it.
There is also a sub and a number of aircraft.

[retroaviation]

The old Deimert Zero is now part of the Pearl Harbor Museum.

[JDK]

The Zero at the NMUSNA when I saw it a year ago looked 'built Diemert tough'.

I presume:

5359 • A6M5-52 Bob Diemert, Carman MAN .68/82
(recov. ex Ballale Island, Solomons .68,
airfreighted to Canada by RCAF C130 1.69)
ff Carman MAN, dam. on landing 20.9.73
(fitted B-25 QEC R-2600, F-86 drop tanks)
USMC Museum, MCAS Quantico VA 82/91
(displ. as "136")
Liberal Air Museum, Liberal KS: loan 89/91
NMNA, NAS Pensacola FL 92/02
(rest. Jacksonville FL 92, displ. Pensacola "EII-140")
(NMNA quotes id. id. 5450, type A6M2-21

(Warbirds Directory, 4th Ed.)

[Michel C-GNCJ]

Nice pics !

Thanks for posting them.

[retroaviation]

Well, to clarify........when I say the "Deimert Zero," I mean, of course, the one he built (if you want to call it that) for the CAF. It is also the one that is in the infamous Defender documentary. It is THAT Zero that is the one now residing in the Pearl Harbor Museum.

Thanks for posting those pictures, by the way.

Gary

[Owen Miller]

Did you go through the Coronado??

[Owen Miller]

Did you go through the Coronado??

[krlang]

No we did not,
The tour driver mentioned that the resto shop was not available for tours on weekends. I was told by the Col. that I could have gotten into anything I wanted if I had called him before I went. We had spent the entire day there, it would have been nice to see, but there was plenty of other stuff.

I did look at the listing for the Alabama on Mikes locator too. We drove over to LuLu's at 5 pm and were back at the hotel by 10. There was no chance that we could have seen anything that night.

Shannon had gotten me a little gift before we left, a Monopod for my camera. I of course, used it all wrong for its purpose. instead of using it to steady my camera for shots in the museum, I extended it out and held it above a bunch of the airplanes to get better angles of the ones over our heads. Timing my unsteady reach and the delay in the camera took a little practice. I deleted a bunch of shots of the ceiling and floor. If you look at the shot of the Zero with the people underneath, I would have had to have been 13 feet tall to get that angle.

[Steve Nelson]

I looked farily closel at the Naval Air Museum "Zero" a few years back. It's definately looks cludged-together. The fuselage looks zero-ish, but the wing center section is obviously from a BT-13. A lot of the sheet metal work was done with pop-rivets, and the tires (easily visibly around the sloppy-fitting gear doors) appear to have come from a garden tractor. Looking up through the oil cooler intake, the accessory section looks to be empty..just the bare engine mount. There's also an odd "bulge" between the wing and fuselage near the leading edge (someone here suggested it was for the rope used to retract the gear..and I'm not sure if they were joking or not!)

Still, I suppose it's better than no Zero at all, and the average visitor wouldn't notice the difference.

The museum's Kawanishi N1K2 Shiden-Kai (George) however, is magnificent! (although for some reason when I saw it the instrument panel was missing.)

SN

[GIJOE290]

Wow, nice photo's of the birds, both natural & mechanized.

Is that a Otter, in the second set, the one that's red & white?

Thanks for sharing.