2017 Nationals – Humor
Nice size for the Humor category this year. My favorite is the Imperial Snow Trooper taking his pet AT-AT for a walk.
IPMS Nationals in Omaha
Earl and I arrived in Omaha around noon on Wednesday. We got our registration packet, placed our models, and of course hit the vendor rooms. The trip up was mostly uneventful, with the only problem happening right outside of St. Louis, where we were stuck in traffic for about 2 hours, moving only 3 miles in the process.
As usual, I’ll be posting photos of all of the models, but here’s a quick taste of what was on the tables on Thursday morning. There’s already some fantastic work on display. Let everyone know that photos will be posted here. I’m going to try to have all of them posted be the end of this coming weekend.
Pelikan Club Meeting S&T – December 2016
Visit to Robins AFB Museum
I’ve often traveled up I-75 on my way to one of the sites I manage for my company. Â Over the years I’ve passed a sign outside of Perry, Georgia referring to the Robins AFB Museum of Aviation. Â It’s one of those places I’ve always muttered, “got to visit that one of these days . . .”
Well, today was that day. My family is taking our yearly trek into the mountains and I convinced my wife we needed to visit the museum as our first stop along the way.
I don’t know why I’ve waited so long.  This is a fantastic, amazing place. Lots and lots of historic airplanes and memorabilia.  It would be easy to spend all day, or even a couple days, going through everything they have on display.  There’s four buildings, the first being where you enter, and are immediately faced by an F-15E Eagle. We also had the opportunity to chat with one of the pilots from the USAF Thunderbirds who were there for an air show the following day. Was cool to have him to ourselves for a few minutes.  Also in the first building is a Korean war display with an F-84 and a P-51, then an area devoted to the India-Burma-China theater in WWII, with a P-40 and a Texan on display there.
The next building focuses on the Vietnam years, and there’s lots of interesting aviation stuff in there to look at, starting with an F-101 and an F-4 Phantom II. Â There’s a lot of helicopters, and a number of smaller observation aircraft. There’s also a MiG-15 next to the Phantom, to demonstrate who the opponent was at the time.
Next up is a building they call ‘A Century of Aviation.’ Â I’m not sure if that’s just an interesting name, or if it’s because there’s a few ‘century series’ fighters on display. Â There’s an F-102 and an F-106, an F-86 and an F-16 Thunderbird. Â There’s also an SR-71 and a U-2 spy plane, and a T-37 ‘Tweet’ trainer.
The last building is also where they do maintenance and restorations, where they’re currently working on restoring a B-17, so they had a number of parts on display. Â They also have a fully restored B-29 Superfortress, the first one I’ve ever seen in the flesh, along with a mock-up of an Atomic Bomb. Â There’s a B-25 gunship and a few trainers and cargo planes in the rest of the building.
Just outside is a row of aircraft, some are cargo haulers and others are figures or recce aircraft. Â There’s a C-124C Globemaster that has to be one of the ugliest airplanes I’ve ever seen, alongside a couple modern cargo planes. Â There’s a B-52, and then a string of fighters.
I took a lot of photos, over 200 in all. Â There’s a gallery below. Â I’ll come back at some point an add some captions and clean up some duplicates or just bad photos, but in the meantime here’s everything, right out of the camera. Â Enjoy.
Star Wars Exhibit
There’s a really nice Star Wars exhibit at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, that shows off a few of the shooting models from the early films and maquette models from the later films (these were models used for reference for the computer-build digital models). Â Additionally, there were some of the props from the latest ‘The Force Awakens’ movie.
When you look at the photos of the older shooting models, see how many parts you can see from model kits, like landing gear, machine guns, transmissions, etc. Â Often used in very unique ways. Â I could have looked at these things for hours!
Some of them are a bit dark; apologies, as I only had my cell phone camera. Â Next time I go I’ll try to remember take a better camera.
You must be logged in to post a comment.