Saturday, June 5, 2010

Tuesday 1st June 2010 Dayton – Lewisburg, West Virginia

Today we are off to The National Museum of the United States Air Force which is the largest and oldest military aviation museum. This was absolutely free and featured more than 400 aircraft from air balloons to the presidential aircraft and unmanned air vehicles. Unlike the Smithsonian in DC this is the Airforces own museum and it is HUGE. The guy on the front Desk said that if we just stopped and watched every Video alone without walking or stopping at any planes it would take 8 hours. Needless to say, we only watched a small percentage of the video content. First up we jumped on the bus and went and saw the Retired Presidents aircraft, the typical Security checks were all done first including having to show your Passports, just in case you are a terrorist. Kennedys Airforce One was the highlight being the biggest, there were 4 Presidents Aircraft in all and you could do a walk=through on each one. In an adjoining Hangar was an experimental aircraft section which had some weird and wonderful stuff, the one that dwarfed the lot was the Valkyrie Supersonic Bomber, sort of a Concord on steroids, very cool. Then back to the 6 Hangars all laid out in an easy to follow order Early Years / World War 2 / Korean War / South East Asia War / Cold War / Current Operations and then a Missile and Space Gallery. We arrived at 11.00 and were kicked out at 5.00 when they shut. Im not a huge Plane Buff but the share scale of achievement and the relatively short time frame can’t help but blow you away. The current operations section for me was the highlight as there were some aircraft in here which I’d never seen or heard of…. Nothing like a good war to advance Aviation is the overwhelming outcome of the tour. By 5.00 we were all planed out, in fact I can guarantee you this will be the last for this trip. Bring on the car stuff I say.
If the day wasn’t long enough we hit the road for Lewisburg Walmart some 6 hours down the road. The Starship Enterprise (RV) was put to the test with some huge climbs into Virginia, she handled them all beautifully in her stride, passing all the trucks up hill, only to have the trucks scream by her down the hills on the other side.

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