Ready to fly away from your cubicle yet? Ron Darner, a
longtime CR4er who serves as the newsletter editor for Chapter 320 (Watertown, Wisconsin)
of the Experimental Aircraft Organization (EAA), has offered to take us on a virtual
aerospace tour. So fasten your seatbelts and place your tray tables in the
upright position!
To
Fly is Everything
"To Fly is
Everything" is a virtual museum on the invention of the airplane, with
video clips of the Wright Brothers, Farman, and Santos-Dumont in flight, as
well as photos made from original plate-glass negatives by the Wrights.
The
Google Maps of Aviation
I found a reference to SkyVector.com that describes the Web site as
"the Google Maps of Aviation". Punch in,
say, KRYV, and you'll have an online sectional chart that you can drag, scroll,
and scale to whatever size is convenient for what you're doing. It's also available on your personal digital
assistant (PDA), iPhone, and Blackberry. Left-click on an airport and its
information pops up. Right click on one,
drag the map until you find a destination airport, and right-click again; it
shows the flight path, distance in nautical miles, and more.
Restoring
a Flying Wing Glider
In an on-line edition of Gliding Magazine, I found a reference to
someone in Argentina
restoring a Horton Ho-1B (a flying wing glider). Its first flight in forty years was captured,
and can be viewed on YouTube.
The article says that the restoration and
flying was done by Diego
Roldán Knöllinger, but it also says that it was posted by Diego Roldan
Hollinger. So I suspect there is a mistranslation somewhere; the names seem
just too similar to believe. There are a
number of glitches and issues in the version I've located here.
The restoration process is documented in
this YouTube video. It
was not a simple one!
The
Wright Brothers Family Album
Yet another collection of photos is at
old-picture.com. Click
here for their themed collection on airplanes. Most photos are familiar, but there are a
number new to me. There's some overlap,
and a lot of family album-type photos from the Wright Brothers here.
I found the site trying to get a better
idea of the "Berliner
Helicopter" (where it is in a museum; looks like a triplane). For more
information, see this
link and then click
here. Aviastar's site has lots of
room to explore, especially for helicopters!
Wings
of History
Last month's photos of an odd car-based
helicopter, by the way, was the SimCopter, built on a Simca, by a gentleman
from Mexico,
who flew it once. It is in the Wings
of History Museum.
Editor's Note: If you'd like to subscribe to Ron Darner's newsletter, click here to send him a private message on CR4.
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