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I took this shot of RA001, the first 747-100, and RT401, the first 747-400, from NA001, the first 757, back in August 1988, for the 747-100 20th anniversary. I was a (much younger) Boeing flight test engineer at the time. It was a great flight- we all launched from KBFI, formed up, flew to Mt. Rainier in formation. circled a few times for photos for news and publicity, then returned to Seattle, flying 1000 ft AGL in formation over Elliott Ave, then recovered at Boeing Field. Sad to see the 747 fading away... I shot this from a Minolta film 35mm SLR, 100 ASA. Copyrighted photo by Brian Bixler.
PICTURE OF THE WEEK: 747s Around Mt. Rainier
This picture was taken by my father in 1972 at Sunset Airstrip in North Plains, Oregon. Photo submitted by Phil Brown.
The Very First Recently Completed RV-3
On a balmy summer afternoon an instructor and her student practice air taxiing over Taxiway Bravo at KMGJ. The doors are removed - ideal for a summer afternoon with temperatures 'hovering' in the mid 80s! Leica SL, 90mm lens. Copyrighted photo by Daniel Spitzer, M.D.
Practicing Air Taxiing at KMGJ
This is a photo taken by my wife, Bonnie-Rae Bailey on June 20th, 2020 flying from Orillia, Ontario to North Bay, Ontario. She was a passenger in a friends Cessna 182 and I am flying the 1963 Cessna 150C you see in the picture. I had just polished the upper surfaces of the flaps and ailerons and it shows in the picture!! It was taken using an iPhone Xs. Photo submitted by Grant Bailey.
Afterburners On
The RV-3 photo has a wonderful history with it too, with Seattle home builders, particularly with EAA Chapter 26. Cecil Ford Hendricks has the Thorp T-18. I have 10 hours of flight time in it and it was an amazing machine, unfortunately destroyed years later down south. His son also was a fixture in his active years in Seattle, both them fine gentlemen and excellent aviators The Wickham Model B twin is a famous plane in the area too. We saw it often at the Arlington Fly-In and it is a touch stone to the days when homebuilding was searching out Boeing Surplus for parts and networking with people, not computers. We have lost the experimental aspect of building new designs in the last two decades as kits have taken away the art and skills. Thanks for the memories.
The Wickham Model B was the first thing I saw in that pic.
Chris: https://pbase.com/donner_blitzen/image/170995229
Hi Mark,
My Dad made innumerable trips to the Boeing Surplus Store and came home with stuff that he had no hope of ever using but he couldn’t resist the quality of the machine work. I was always on the periphery of the EAA stuff but the last few years have learned a great deal more and what you say about how homebuilding has changed has become very evident to me with his plans built RV-3 in the hangar and having just sold his Pazmany project, to say nothing about what I’ve learned about the Beaverton Outlaws these last few years. I have quite a number of pictures that my Dad took of this era you mention that I’ll start posting on pbase, this particular one you can get here and if you then click on original it’ll give you a high resolution copy that I think you can drag to your desktop: https://pbase.com/donner_blitzen/image/170994550. As I add more if at some point if there are others that appeal to you let me know, maybe we can figure out how to communicate without my having my email out there for all the world to see. I’ve sent a few more RV related pictures to AVweb so for the time being I’m going to hold off on those so as to not spoil the fun, not that I’m expecting them to be used but I’ll wait and see. By the way, I’ve noticed the same change in the radio control hobby, does anybody build anything anymore? What is this going to mean in the long term, this loss of craftsmanship? Or will it just be transferred to, well, scanning? Still I’m worried for our collective future. Okay boomer.
Phil, if you have a 1920 resolution photo, I’d love to have a copy. I also wish that Avweb would go back to having higher resolution photos for the POTW rather than these thumbnails of a photo.