Summer Vacation

[STL-Scott]

Michelle and Liam in the Smithsonian Garden:

A really cool HD V-Rod I saw parked on the street...like the flat black/gloss black stripes...

THE Hope Diamond...not really that impressive...

US Holocaust Memorial - A sobering place, but great architecture though...

 

[STL-Scott]

My favorite place...

The Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum. Next time I will make it out to Dulles in Chantilly, VA to see their larger exhibit at the Steven Udvar-Hazy Museum/Hangers.

Here are some shots of my favorite planes in the one on the Mall.

The Wright Flyer:

The Spirit of St. Louis:

Spaceship One (First Privately funded and built recoverable spaceship to sucessfully take off and land from a runway)...it won the X-Prize in 2005 (built and designed by Scaled Composites - Burt Rutan, yadda, yadda, yadda:

And Voyager, another one of his creations that his brother Dick Rutan co-piloted non-stop, un-refueled around the world:

 

[STL-Scott]

Some great planes from WWII

It's either a Messerschmit or a Folke-Wolfe (German) over a P-51D (my favorite plane of WWII):

Is this the future of our airforce? Unmanned remote piloted stealth aircraft????

Well...thanks for viewing along!

 

[Tim M]

Cool pics! If you like planes and the history of same, go to Wright Patterson in Dayton, OH
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/ Went there with a Scout group a couple years ago, and could have stayed another day or two.

 

[rednour1]

Scott,

Funny you should mention the unmanned aircraft. I friend who flys Warthogs in the Airforce that took an extra 2 years in Korea just to keep flying. It seems that most pilots who are getting re-assigned are getting put on drones. That doesn't help acumulate flight hours! I found it quite interesting.