[Bryan]

I went to Oregon for Christmas. We paid a visit to the Spruce Goose were I saw this Ural with sidecar.

That bike and a lot of aircraft are parked under both wings of the Hercules. It's a great Museum and I recommend it to everybody. This video gives you an idea of how big this aircraft is.





In this pic you can just make out the bike under the wing of the Mitchell B-25 which is standing under the port stabilizer.

Sorry I don't think the link worked for the video so here's the direct link.


Click here to see the video.

[ This message was edited by: Bryan on 2007-01-12 17:22 ]

 

[SCCTrim]

That plane is amazing...

 

[LEE]

Amazing and it was only air born once for a second and barely at that.

 

[Brooksie]

Hughes was a crazed genius! Too bad he didn't design motorcycles. Probably would've had the Rocket III in 1935.

 

[black-bonnie]

Amazing and it was only air born once for a second and barely at that.

It flew longer than that:

"On 02 November 1947, it flew 70 feet over the water for one mile at a top speed of 80 mph."

 

[Bryan]

It actually flew about 25 feet off the water. Here's a pic of the ships log book and another looking under the wing.

 

[SpeedyPete]

Is the museum in Portland? I'm going to be out that way on MLK day. May just stop by.

P

 

[black-bonnie]

It actually flew about 25 feet off the water. Here's a pic of the ships log book and another looking under the wing.

This is confusing. The news video says 70 feet. Every record about it says 70 feet and yet this log shows "about 25 ft".

The log also says the flight time was "approx 30 sec." and yet it was for over a minute, more about a minute and a half. Makes me real skeptical about the perception of the person riding down this log. Was this log even of the Spruce Goose.

The plane was 79 feet, 4 inches tall. Looking at the film and photos, the plane certainly appears to fly above the water by about its height spacing itself.

The log says, "first taxi runs", yet Howard did 3 taxi runs on water and it was after that is when it flew. So how can the log say first taxi run?

So, until I'm shown some hard evidence otherwise, it was 70 feet above the water.

 

[rodburner]

I think getting that giant plane of the ground [or water]at all was a feat.Those oldtimers really had the cajones. When Tex Johnston did a barrel roll in a Boeing 707 above Lake Washington during Seafair,4 days after I was born,my dad [a 42yr Boeing employee] said you could hear a pin drop on the beach that day.I`ve seen a way better video of this but can`t find it on line.
Tex

[ This message was edited by: rodburner on 2007-01-13 14:21 ]

 

[black-bonnie]

That's quite a story about Tex. Thanks.

"As the second heat of the race drew to a close, even the powerboat fans were looking up. It was a Sunday, so Boeing's workers were out in the sun, watching the Angels' usual great display and waiting to see what Tex Johnston, their chief test pilot was going to do with the new baby. The minutes seemed to drag and the question on everyone's lips was, “Where's Tex?” Then they saw him. Racing over the floating bridge, apparently at mast height, was a big yellow and brown jet airliner doing over four hundred miles an hour and pointing right at the race course. Then the left wing began do dip and everyone held their breath, because there had been accidents before and every Boeing worker on the lake knew this could be another one. “The Dash 80's going down!” But the right wing kept on rising and the plane kept on rolling, over and over, past inverted, until it was back on the straight and level, still going flat out and close enough to the water that some of the people on the rooftops were looking down on it.

Then, just in case anyone had missed it, Tex went round and did it again."