{"id":3173,"date":"2012-04-11T12:05:25","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T17:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fitzvideo.com\/sky_surfing\/?p=3173"},"modified":"2012-04-12T11:51:13","modified_gmt":"2012-04-12T16:51:13","slug":"a-trip-to-fort-worths-antique-airplane-association-spring-fling-31-march-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/2012\/04\/11\/a-trip-to-fort-worths-antique-airplane-association-spring-fling-31-march-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"A Trip to Fort Worth’s Greatest Generation Aircraft “Spring Fling” – 31 March 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am working on Part 3 of my series on Antique and Vintage Airplanes called “That They Might Fly Again<\/a>“. I like to add segments to these movies featuring what I call “The Romance of Aviation”. To do this I visit a lot of different flying venues to capture the action. My first trip of the Fly-in\/Airshow season was to Fort Worth, Texas. Greatest Generation Aircraft<\/a> was having their “Spring Fling”. I decided this called for a maximum effort. I didn’t want to spend two days and stay in a motel room so I left Wichita at 2 am in order to be at the show for the 7:30am door opening. Dana Wood, the lady in charge of the event was kind enough to provide me a special parking place but I would have to get there at opening time. The parking place was good. After shooting all day I got back in my Mini Cooper and drove back to Wichita arriving home about 10pm.<\/p>\n

The following are some still frames grabbed from some of the video I took that day.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A Stearman and a Travel Air<\/p><\/div>\n

It was quite warm that day and upon arrival the field was socked in. It made for some interesting pictures but unfortunately prevented a good number of pilots from arriving that morning.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A 1929 Travel Air<\/p><\/div>\n

This Travel Air is a wonder to behold. It is owned by Scott Glover of Mt. Pleasant, Texas. He gave a few rides that day. The motor sounds great!\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For quite a while that morning it stayed locked in. There was no wind and the temperatures and humidity conspired to maintain fog. While I was waiting for things to happen I shot this “runway closed” marker they put on one of the runways close to the show.<\/p>\n

They have some really nice WWII planes in their club. The C-47 gave rides continually once the fog let up. Here are some shots of it:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

C-47 with the first glint of sun on its wings<\/p><\/div>\n

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On the threshold. This was later in the day. You can see the heat waves.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The C-47 has a very imposing look to it.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

At one time there were thousands of C-47 \/ DC-3's<\/p><\/div>\n

There was no place to park at the Club’s side of the field so they arranged for a satellite parking place. A really special innovation in keeping with the “antique” theme was the classic service trucks they used to transport folks back and forth.<\/p>\n

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These trucks were manned by some dedicated volunteers and were constantly moving back and forth with folks.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Travel Air, the Stearman and a nice Great Lakes took a lot of people up for rides in the cool air.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Travel Air just after roll out turning off the active<\/p><\/div>\n

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After landing, still on the active<\/p><\/div>\n

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A later arrival<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Taking out another passenger<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Great Lakes - Tail up - Ready for takeoff<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Great Lakes about to touch down <\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

This still was early. You can see the fog in the background. They were parked around the bend and were taxiing over to the show.<\/p><\/div>\n

The club or one of their members has a really nice P-51. It didn’t fly that day.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

They also have a B-25 but it did not fly that day. They kept it under an awning which did not provide potential for good pictures. Maybe there was a possibility of hail. It looked to be kept in great shape but the cowl was off the left engine so probably it was in need of maintenance. I noticed this B-25 has a machine gun mounted in the nose. I had never seen that before and wonder if it was ever done in WWII or Korea. It also had guns mounted on the side of the fuselage which I know was done in wartime.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The B-25 drew a lot of attention all day. My Father had some time in the B-25 but mostly flew fighters. His comment on the B-25 was that it was incredibly loud in the cockpit.<\/p><\/div>\n

Here is a great restoration of an SNJ trainer. One of my Dad’s jobs in the Air Force was training pilots in the Army Air Corps version of the SNJ called the T-6 Texan.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

This was from quite a distance. You can see heat waves.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The shiny skin attests to the care paid to this plane<\/p><\/div>\n

In addition to all the airplanes, classic and hot rod cars were invited to add to the show.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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It was a great day regardless of the early fog and long round trip drive. I have a few more lined up. I will keep you up to date with them as I shoot ’em.<\/p>\n

Blue Skies & Tailwinds!<\/p>\n

Brian FitzGerald<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am working on Part 3 of my series on Antique and Vintage Airplanes called “That They Might Fly Again“. I like to add segments to these movies featuring what I call “The Romance of Aviation”. To do this I visit a lot of different flying venues to capture the action. My first trip of […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,9,4,6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-airshows","category-antique-or-classic","category-fly-ins","category-show-an-airfield","category-uncategorized","category-17-id","category-9-id","category-4-id","category-6-id","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3173"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3206,"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3173\/revisions\/3206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}