Oshkosh 2006 - Page 4
B-1B arrives Monday afternoon.
T-28's get ready for mass formation.
Antique Racer.
I forgot the name of this beautiful homebuilt. Much prettier than a Van's airplane.
The Eclipse tent, before the certification announcement.
Eclipse 500 wing structure. Note the CNC milled spar and ribs. It's hard to believe that this is cheaper than stamping for ribs. This airframe was an early version, and still had considerable riveting.
Eclipse 500 panel. Nice.
Nemesis NXT in front of the Lycoming tent. It's actually a beastly airplane, with a huge spinner. Note the cross hatched etching on the propeller, that looks like what you'd expect the inside of a new jug to look like before break-in.
Lycoming "heavy fuel" proof-of-concept. I wonder if the new Cessna airplane might be trying this? All Cessna will say now is that it's Lycoming powered.
The EAA Museum is not terribly big. And it has quite a few homebuilts and aerobatic airplanes in it that you can see by the hundreds out on the ramp. But it does have a few very rare and interesting airplanes.
This is the Bugatti Model 100 racing aircraft designed in 1937. It was not completed before the war started, and it was hidden in a barn for the duration. It never flew. It had two Bugatti racing engines in the fuselage driving two drive shafts that went on either side of the pilot who sat up in the nose. The two propellers were independently driven in opposite directions.
This is the XP-51. When the British ordered the "Mustang I" from North American Aviation, the US Army requisitioned the 4th airframe and designated it the "XP-51" for testing. This is it.
Burt Rutan on the floor talking about designing spacecraft. He had the SS1 clone swung into the "feather" mode over the heads of those folks sitting on the floor.
Hondajet prototype with it's natural laminar flow nose and patented engine mounting pylons being towed back into the Honda tent after it's demonstration flight. I missed seeing it fly while listening to Burt Rutan's talk.
Big formations of aircraft are an Oshkosh specialty. These kinds of things used to be done all the time during the war for reviews etc. But the military doesn't often have this number of planes in one place at one time anymore, so Oshkosh is the only place you'll see it.
P-38 flown by Steve Hinton, plus P-51 and F-16 in a heritage flight.
