Hemmings Motor News Blog

Hello All:

This is my first posting in this forum guys and gals, so please take it easy on me! LOL

I wish I had heard about the Rhinebeck Vintage Bike Show here. Had I had known of the show I would have loved to had gone to it, just to see the old restored Indians! Now, I only live about a mile away from the old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, but I didn't hear a peep about the bike event in the local newspaperst, nor did I see any advertisemnet for it in town, or thereabouts, etc..

Is this bike show show held annually, or was it a special one-time event? Does anyone here have any further information is this regard?

Also, interesting to note that the Museum up in Springfield will be exhibiting a 1937 GeeBee! Incidently for those of you who aren't aviation buffs, GeeBees were originally built in Springfield MA for years. Even Jimmy Doolittle flew one (I believe in the Cleveland Air Races), setting a world's airspeed record.

I don't believe any of the original GeeBees are still air worthy, as they were highly unstable and tended to crash more often then not, but boy they were the fastest thing in the air at the time !!!! Most of the surviving airframes are now static displays in air museums.

There is, however, a single replica being flown on the airshow circuit Well, at least it was around a decade ago. I don't know if there are any others that have been built since then and now are flying. About ten years ago, a beutiful GeeBee replica flew a flight several demos at the The Great New England Airshow that was held at Westover Air Force Reserve Base, a former SAC bomber base which is currently a AFRES C-5A/B Galaxy transport base and located up in Chicopee MA, just north of Springfield. Luckily, I was able to get some great videotaping done of those flights with my old trusty Sony 8mm digicam!!! Ditto, in regard to the flight demos made by a pair of retored F-104 Starfighters that had been obtained from the Greek AirForce!!!! Ohhh what a racket they made, which really really upset the audio track of my camcorder!! Me thinks the track got super-saturated by the decibels pumped out of the huge GE J-79 jet engines! LOL Anyhow, it was nice to see and hear the old Century Fighters up in the air again....ahhhh, the sound of FREEDOM!!! ***GRINZZZ***

Have a great weekend everyone!

===Mark

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