USAF museum in Dayton

[Bob Ohio]

I landed at 11:00 and Zac was sitting there waiting for me. He looked at my "Junk Heap Special" We talked about the 135hp engine and it being just a fun toy that a 50 year pilot and 75 year old boy has fun flying. Then we went and looked at his trophy. He said it was a pile of parts, disassembled engine , when they bought it. His grandfather who has been a long time pilot and has the farm implied " We have enough junk on the farm and it will probably end up on the farm scrap pile". 5,000 hours later, it became a trophy winner. Grand dad likes to fly it. Had lunch and talked about of family farm backgrounds and went to the B-17.
There were two men working on B-17 sections. This airplane is being built from the original Boeing blue prints and and everything that is missing is being built by hand. The shop has everything to form, shape, bend, roll, structural metals. One person was working on the main tail bulk head that the horizontal stabilizer was mounted to. This retired machinist , had been working on this for a year. The other fellow, was working on an engine housing which had been completely hand built and was doing sheet meat work around a burnt up turbo charger that was installed for fitting buildup. By this time Zac was awe struck and was asking questions and getting answers. Both said you want to help on a project, we need young people like you. I looked around at other planes, and when I came back to say good bye, he was with the engine cell man talking and learning. A very nice quiet young man that has the potential to become an asset in keeping these old antique airplanes flying. The B-17 project is interesting project, especially when the workers are there to talk to.

Bob Ohio

[smcnutt]

Now I'm REAL sorry I missed it....next time.

P.S. Mine is a 135 also. Seems fine to me but I probably just don't know better.

[Zac Weidner]

I flew right over Indianapolis, wasn't sure which airport you are based at though.

I don't know that the two museums were worth 6 hours of avgas, but is was a nice day to fly anyway.
The Waco museum was pretty neat but only took me a little over an hour or so to see. One of the airplanes there has 14,000 hours and was flown almost every night over Kings Island for some kind of airshow until the owner died and the family donated the airplane. There was some Hartzell history also, since apparently there was a relationship between Mr. Weaver and Mr. Hartzell. Hartzell originally made wooden farm wagons, and Mr. Weaver talked him into making aircraft propellers, since there were many problems with inexperienced people making laminated wooden props and not knowing how to properly dry the wood. There was a 22 ft long Hartzell prop off of one of the airships, very big. I stopped at Piqua-Hartzell airport for fuel on the way back, but there wasn't a whole lot there.

There was some sort of group that was touring the museum as I was leaving and it looked like they had a good time watching me depart, since the runway goes right by the buildings.


Grimes is a much more active place. The restaurant was a nice, small one with good food and atmosphere. The B-17 restoration is much more interesting than I had anticipated. I learned why they got such a reputation for ruggedness. Everything is just so beefy looking, almost looks more like a piece of farm equipment than something that should fly. I also realized how much labor was involved in constructing the thousands of B-17's that were produced in only a few years.

The volunteers were trying to recruit me to start making parts for them, but I told them I lived too far away to get started on that. The guy that was working on two of the engine nacelles had been working for 3 years on them, and probably has at least that many more to finish those two, plus two more after that. His estimation is around 20 years to go for the whole project.

They are starting to work on building jigs for the wings, but there is still a lot of time left on the fuselage. All the tail surfaces have to be built yet, and lots of things inside the fuselage.

They had a piece of wing skin that had some signatures and artwork by 3 of the original factory workers.

I can say that this is as real as it gets in terms of restorations. I think I can say that there is no more craftsmanship or skill involved in any other project anywhere. I feel like the Tri-Pacer restoration was more like a rubber band kit plane than a restoration, when compared to this undertaking.