My wife, her parents and I spent a few days out of town this last week, and I wanted to share some things relevant, at least tangentially relevant, to this website.
First day was at that long time favorite destination of mine, the Museum of the United States Air Force. It seemed funny to visit there just a day after I posted the Memphis Belle here! I’ve done enough longer posts on that Museum I won’t worry about rehashing too much of it again.
Yes, its a genuine Wright Brothers bicycle!Stained glass window featuring the wreck of the “Lady Be Good”, North AfricaOriginal main gear from the XB-36 prototype. I don’t know why my wife wanted those two guys in the way…Looking up the motive of the B-70 Valkyrie.
The next day was spent at the 2021 Dayton Air Show. At four hours long it was a bit on the short side this year, and traffic management in and out seemed much worse than I recall. But that said, after a whole year of nothing, it was awesome to see an air show again!
The AeroShell team in their AT-6 Texans put on a good formation show, and proved they were “the noisy North Americans”!Navy Legacy Flight put an F4U Corsair and F/A-18 Super Hornet.Interesting face off. That’s “Shockwave”, the three jet powered semi-tractor against a Pitts. They had a fair and sporting drag race in the true WWE sense of the word…The clouds parted, and behold, there were Thunderbirds!
The next day I wasn’t even planning on mentioning here, but much to my surprise it proved relevant both to my love of history AND scale modeling!
The Ark Encounter in Wiliamstown Kentucky. I’ve heard (call this here say, no documentation) this is the most popular tourist destination in Kentucky. And I’d believe it! It’s huge, well conceived in every sense of the word, and busy, busy, busy…Inside is a gorgeous model of their speculative Noah’s Ark, its even in 1/48 scale. It is SO MUCH bigger than anything I’ve ever built! The ancient sources we have for information on this (The Book of Genesis in the Holy Bible) really offers very little information about its form or any details. But it absolutely does give its dimensions! The unit of measure used is the Cubit, which varies some across the years but is generally around 18 inches. So that all means, even if a lot of guesswork and artistic license is involved in the details, the bulk of the Ark is exactly as reported!The real challenge was getting photos without kids swarming all over! This was really awe inspiring, and quite a popular exhibit.
I'm 5o-something years old and live in Ypsilanti, Michigan. I'm happily married to Jodie. I was an air traffic controller for 33 years and recently retired; grew up in the Chicago area, and am still a fanatic for pizza and the Chicago Bears. My main interest is military history, and my related hobbies include scale model building and strategy games.
No doubt! The production aircraft switched to four wheels per strut (as seen behind us). It reduced ground pressure and increased the number of airports the beast could use.
It is the (in)famous monster that was said to have “six turning and four burning” engines (six piston and four jet engines). It’s 230 foot wingspan is the widest ever on a combat aircraft.
They have finally finished demolishing the old runways at the Bong Nature Preserve in Wisconsin; believe those were 10 feet thick! Forget how many of those “super” runways were built for the B-36 across the US…
BTW; Those “10 foot runways’ were only needed for the original “single” main gear, as shown in your photo. The final design replaced each of those with 4 tires each; but the “uber” runways were already built… J. Allseits
Plane Dave 
The B-36 must have been a rather large beast!
No doubt! The production aircraft switched to four wheels per strut (as seen behind us). It reduced ground pressure and increased the number of airports the beast could use.
It is the (in)famous monster that was said to have “six turning and four burning” engines (six piston and four jet engines). It’s 230 foot wingspan is the widest ever on a combat aircraft.
They have finally finished demolishing the old runways at the Bong Nature Preserve in Wisconsin; believe those were 10 feet thick! Forget how many of those “super” runways were built for the B-36 across the US…
Oh wow! Yeah I know it hardly ever deployed outside the continental US. It’s needs were too great.
BTW; Those “10 foot runways’ were only needed for the original “single” main gear, as shown in your photo. The final design replaced each of those with 4 tires each; but the “uber” runways were already built… J. Allseits
Yeah I don’t recall the specifics, but the plaque next to that original gear talks about the ground pressure issue. It was obviously a big problem!