TimeOut

So looking over the assortment of vehicles, and planning to stay mostly on roads (not necessarily paved), but uphill and not too far away, we took the Chevy Volt and headed to Ramona, 40 miles away, 50 years behind the times, and 1500 ft above sea level. No clouds!

We followed our noses north and west from "downtown" Ramona.

It looked like a gigantic nose! What is this thing? He said "It's a VTOL aircraft, a couple guys and I built it on a shoe-string budget, this is the third version, I crashed the second version, etc etc."




I guessed (based on its look) "Was it built in the Sixties?" and he replied "No, around 2000-2008. It just looks funky but those are the wings we needed to control it. The nose, well ..." It's all carbon fibre and flew tethered, controlled remotely from inside a building (protective shielding for a crash)

There were a few fixed wing aircraft scattered around, 



we looked in the auxiliary warehouse/workshop



and then we went inside the main hangar. WOW!



These guys aren't messing around. Army, Navy, Marine, police, fire, private --- every kind of vertical takeoff aircraft you can imagine. And our guide had flown many of them, himself.



Including some monsters!!!



Although the museum wasn't open, we got a pretty comprehensive tour, minus any other folks, video programs, and gift shop.



But talk about flying monsters!



Rescue and recovery operations interior on this one



Flying banana?



Found in a field, given free "if you'll take it away", so they did.



Now the airframe looks like this:





Then we kicked it up a few notches.

This interior is more than 50 ft long.



The tail is folded sideways and the clamshell doors on the nose are off, because otherwise it sticks out of the hangar.

This huge ship flew into Vietnam after the battles ended and picked up the usable pieces.

Whew. The mind boggles at how they put all these machines back together and FLY THEM.

Around the back we found an assortment of smaller craft.

Did I say SMALLER? This was the smallest helicopter trainer in the museum. I asked Where does the instructor sit?

My wife muttered an unrepeatable exclamation...



By now we were viewing UFOs, executive luxury helicopter/motorhomes, etc



How about the Tri-Phibian - Sea Air Land (SEAL) one of a kind, sadly.





A tiny gyro copter pusher with a pedigree (I did a very little work with McCullouch 2-strokes)



We peeked into the model room 



Sadly our guide had to go to lunch with some buddies, so we said goodbye and We Will Be Back!

I hope all you pilots and frequent fliers enjoyed this quick flyover. IF YOU REALLY WANT TO FLY OVER, check out the very short video.

Cheers,

Cazalea

PS - thank you Mr Northrup for the impromptu tour.

  login to reply