Warbird Information Exchange

Hi All,

Since gas is cheap right now, my brother and I (and our Significant Others) decided to make a "spur of the moment" run down to Dayton Monday (he and I are hoping to take the Behind The Scenes tour next month.) I only shot a couple hundred pics..a light day for me. I was trying for some "artsy" stuff this time, although I really need to get a decent camera. Here some of the results.

Cheers!

Steve

Awesome stuff man. I love the reflection of the flag in the tail of the B-47.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Director

Thanks, Mike!

Actually, that reflection shot is the B-58. I'm mostly a WWII fan, but that bird is just dead sexy..looks like she's doing Mach 2 just sitting on the ground!

SN

Nice to see someone using a bit of imagination. Great stuff, which we don't get enough of!

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

A few more. My apologies if some are a bit out of focus..I was shooting mostly hand-held.

SN

Any idea why the swastikas on Col. Laughlins P-47 are backwards? Is that accurate or a sop to the revisionists who want to P.C. everything away?
P.C. this and spin on it!

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

Excellent. Nice stuff.

Probably, although I don't know specifically for that airframe, US representations of the Swastika in W.W.II were all over the place, in part to show contempt for the enemy, at other times, such as those re-applied to FE captured aircraft, through carelessness - how justified, you choose.

I've never heard of 'reversing' a Swastika being an acceptable revision to keep anyone happy, but then...

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

Neat pictures!

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"Everyone wants to live here (New Jersey), evidenced by the fact that it has the highest population per capita in the U.S..."

Very nice pictures !

Being one doing many of them in museums, I know very well how challenging it can be.

Thanks for posting them ! It never gets old...

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Michel C
Thousands of a/c pics at Passion-Aviation

It was copied just as it was on his aircraft. Not sure why it was like that on the original. The scoreboard was very important to the restoration team, and they really busted their humps to get it right.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Director

Fan-Freakin'-tastic! Thanks so much for posting these shots.

Hand held? D*mn, I'm impressed!

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Sure, Charles Lindbergh flew the plane... but Tom Rutledge built the engine!

Visit Django Studios online or Facebook!

Anybody know why the gun barells are different on the two jugs? Weren't they the same configuration and as far as I know the same style and length from early versions to the last? Just curious.
Really great photos BTW, I wish I had an eye for that type of photography and I even have a decent DSLR!

Thanks for the comments, guys!

I believe the gun barrels on the Razorback T-bolt are oversized fakes installed when the plane was flown by Republic on publicity tours back in the 50s or 60s. I've been curious about the Bubbletop myself. Production P-47s had solid blast tubes covering the perforated cooling jackets. I assume the restoration crew will eventually get around to adding them. The plane looks vastly better than it did before its recent refurbishment. It used to be painted plain silver with no guns at all.

Many of the NMUSAF WWII aircraft have some innacuracies here and there, thanks to their convoluted histories (many had been "civilianized" before coming to the museum.) The restoration folks have been slowly putting them back into stock configuration, but it's a never ending job. Over the years, they've done a lot of work on the Marauder, including building an entire tail gun position (although she's still a B-26G painted as a B.) The A-20 currently has the higher-profile turret dome, when it should have the lower style (the B-24 used to be the same way, but was fixed a few years ago.) The museum also recently added an upper turret to the P-61 (again, she's a C painted as a B.)

I'm not trying to be critical..these are things only us really anal nit-pickers would notice. Like many here, I may not be a fan of some of the recent activities of NMUSAF management, but I have always loved the museum and its aircraft, and visit whenever possible (thankfully it's only a four-hour drive.)

SN

Great pics! Gotta ask, hand held or tripod? Camera lens combo info? I know the lighting in many museums makes it very difficult to get good shots. That and the number of AC piled into most museums. The number is a good thing the bad is trying to get an angle to shoot without getting a wingtip or prop in the face!

I love these close-up detail shots! My big lens has such a high f-stop that shooting in dimly lit places hand held is a waste of time and pixels!

Gotta get up there some day!!!

For most of the closeups, I used my Canon S2-IS. Some were shot hand-held, and some using a monopod for stabilization. Most took several attempts..that's the great thing about digital, you can see the results immediately and delete the rejects. The camera seems to adapt well to the low light, although as you can see the pics come out a bit grainy and low contrast. I'd love to get a decent DSLR so I could get some really sharp photos.

For nice, crisp shots with good contrast I usually have to resort to a tripod an a long exposure. With digital, one or two seconds is plenty, but back when I was shooting film, I would do time exposures of up the 60 seconds in the musuem.

For really wide-angle shots, I use my ancient (almost five years old!) Kodak point-and-shoot, with a screw-on wide angle lens. I currently can't use it with a tripod, because the threads on the plastic mounting hole are stripped (I'll have to get a big nut from the hardware store and epoxy it to the bottom of the camera.)

You're right about trying to get clear shots with the aircraft jammed in together..especially the B-36. That's the main reason I've started experimenting with "overhead" shots using my extended monopod and a time-delay.

SN