DamonMeyer, it’s obvious you used some of our advice in the “Typical Male Question” thread in finding a good wife!

usmc, the article I posted said it "will be hard to miss one of the newest additions to the museum," so I don’t know why you didn’t see the 747. Could you please try again?

11Fan, for the first time, I am not sure how to respond to your eating at that haute place called Taco Bell.

 

Yeah, bad idea. I was running for more than the border after that.

 

I dunno, I told her about the post on the Dulles present and she said "yeah, that was an anomaly, don't get used to it" On the other hand...she did fund my PPL training with dad's credit card while we were in college in '91. How's THAT for good wife material!? Wait a minute she was my girlfriend at the time. She also went to Oshkosh with me that summer. It is probably written somewhere...chicks that camp at Oshkosh with you should be married. Not bad for a non-flying spouse

Back on topic - Wright Patterson museum in Dayton lets visitors go into/through some of their bigger exhibits, i.e. Eisenhower's Air Force One ("Columbine", Super Constellation). Would they ever do that with, say, the Concorde or the 707 at the NASM? Nice little plexiglas tunnel through them...?

 

If it's there, it was low key and too neutral for me to get annoyed by it. I think some blood from a sustainably-ranched, free-range chicken might have been splashed on the plane at some point, but that washes off.

They did an awesome job on that aircraft, it literally looks better than when it rolled off the assembly line. I went another time and talked for a while with a docent who had worked as a mechanic on B-29's sometime between WWII and Korea, it was very cool to stand there with some living history next to the machines he worked on "way back in the day".

 

Sure it wasn't somebody representation of the blood of 100 thousand innocent Japanese symbolically painted on? Glad to here she looks good. I first saw the Enola Gay in Silver Springs in the 60s or early 70s. Went to the Air and Space at least 4 times a year from when it opened till the Enola Gay display ****ed me off.

 

If you saw the Concorde and 707, you must have been at the Udvar-Hazy annex at IAD.
The new gallery vagabond is talking about will be at the NASM location on the Mall. I'm glad they're getting a new gallery as some of the stuff that's been there for a while is getting kind of stale.
When I was younger I got to visit the Paul Garber restoration facility and see aircraft being prepared to get put on display. I even got to stick my head inside the Enola Gay's fuselage . I don't know if they still do tours of the facility, but it's definitely worth looking into.

 

Other good museums should you have the opportunity-

Southern Museum of Flight- Birmingham, AL
Almost right on airport property- 2-3 hours.

8th Airforce Museum- Savannah, GA
Phenomenal museum, very moving- right off Savannah's airport, close to I-95, $10 admission- 2-4 hours, depending on how fast you read and how much you linger.

Warner-Robins, GA (Macon area)- Air Force Museum, much expanded since I've been there, but was good when I was there. Fair distance from Macon, but if you are in the area..

 

You must live in the southeast. I went those museums many times.

Warner Robbins has a lot of airplanes, decommissioned service craft that were saved from recycling. As a random collection they do not fit plans a curator would make. Many of the planes are interesting, such as the B52, SR71, recon a/c, and fighters. It is a large military aviation museum, although pretty random.

Southern Aviation Museum in Birmingham has an excellent piston bomber engine collection. To see 28 supercharged cylinders arranged on a single crankshaft is quite a sight, and a few of them operate as cutaways. Radials carried the hopes of the Allied Forces during WWII, and were the last major design before turbines assumed a dominant role. They were magnificent machines, arguably the finest production examples of the 20th Century.

Aviation museums are special. Where else can you tie together decades of war, peace, culture and technology while eating a hot dog.