FIFi came to Springfield once. I got a vid but the sound just doesn't work like being there. That thing shakes the ground!!!!!
Love those guys and what they do!!!

I took this photo of Fifi yesterday.  I have a video of the entire starting process on my cellphone, but it is too long to email it to myself.  I'll have to edit it.

When the first engine started, with the typical cloud of oil smoke from a cold radial, someone behind me said, "I guess they didn't have to smog that!"

The takeoff was very gentle since they had an 8000 foot runway and it is, after all, an old airplane.  I wish I could post some inflights, but I didn't have the $595 to $1695 to take a flight (depending on where in the plane you sit).   They did three flights a day for the four days it was here and they were all sold out before the plane got here!

There are only a couple handfuls of airworthy Fortresses left. This one caught me off guard earlier this year. It's a sight and sound to behold.

Can you imagine a sortie of fifty B-17's with 1800 cylinders of screaming Cyclone engine  descending over you with 200 tons of high explosives? By the middle of '45 I doubt there were more than a dozen clean pairs of underwear in Europe.

Back in May of 2013 a neighbor of mine was walking about the neighborhood taking pictures of birds.  He heard something strange, looked up, and snapped a picture of this.

On Monday I was hauling the trash cans to the curb for pickup day when I heard an aircraft overhead.  This is not unusual since I am a quarter mile off the center line of the runway at Bob Hope Airport (Lockheed) in Burbank, but this was one damn funny sounding airplane.  Looking up I saw a V-22, Osprey, for the first time in actual flight.  Now that I know what they sound like I will look up sooner when one comes over. 

I always know when there is an historic aircraft on tour visiting Burbank because I remember the sounds of airplanes they way my wife remembers the scent of perfumes.  I'm close enough to the airport that I can hear something with multiple, round engines taxiing for take off or the piercing whine of the turbos of a P-38 as it's take off run starts...sounds that never fail to get me to dash out of the house to watch them fly by.  My wife says that I'm just like a little kid with a Pavlovian reaction to airplane sounds.  Guilty!   

Seen anything a wee bit different fly by lately?

Howard