Flying Friday: Independence Day Flight To KAZO

For Independence Day I flew to a suitably patriotic site:  The Kalamazoo Air Zoo.

Flew VFR with flight following. Pontiac airport was rather quiet at even at 9:00 am they still were using the ASOS rather than the ATIS. Called up ground and got flight following. I decided to fly to KAZO via the HAAKK waypoint so it kept me away from Battle Creek where there was a TFR for an airshow there and would otherwise be directly in the route.

 

So I flew there and it was quire a nice day. Very smooth conditions.

 

Some haze and a layer at around 5,500  that stopped me from climbing to 6,500 as I had planned.

Flew by Battle Creek, safely outside the TFR.

Got clearance to land on Runway 17, and was told to enter a left base and did so and then did a nice landing. Stopped lined up right for the taxiway to go right to the Air Zoo, which was fortuitous and rather perfect for arrival. Did the very short taxi and parked the plane and got let in through the back of the museum and signed in. We were in the second building, the Flight Discovery Center, where they do the restorations and had the place to ourselves in the morning.

Grumman F-11 Tiger in Blue Angels Livery

F-104 Starfighter

 

F-117 Nighthawk - the only one on display outside of a government museum.

There is also an F-86 Sabre and a MiG-15 on display:

 Lots of cool things to see in the building, including their work restoring a SBD-1 Dauntless recovered from Lake Michigan. The plane went down in 1942, killing the trainee pilot and was recovered in 1994, 52 years later.

The restoration is coming along, per the status board:

 Very cool and it is not far from being restored to display condition, even as it doesn't look it.  Unfortunately, it will not be restored to flying condition, only display. When complete, will be shipped off to the Pearl Harbor National Memorial Museum.

We then went to the main building, the Flight Innovation Center, which had more people there.

And lots more aircraft to see.

 

SR-71

V-1 Missile

XP-55 The Only One Left In The World.

P-47

Buchon, the Spanish copy of the ME BF-109

A Pink P-40

F-14 Tomcat of Top Gun fame

 We also got in line and tried the full motion  simulators.

Yes, you can do a full 360 degree roll in them.

 

 Much fun.

Then we walked back to the  Flight Discovery Center and saw more aircraft on display outside.

F-4 Phantom II

MiG-21

S-3 Viking

 

A decent cloud layer was in place.  Time to fly back VFR and play dodge cloud.

Did a weather brief, and pre-flight, and called Kalamazoo Ground for flight following back to Pontiac via HAAKK, and to taxi.

Got all that done and did a nice takeoff.

On connection to Great Lakes Approach, they asked me if I had put the HAAKK waypoint in myself.  I said I had. The controller then said nice job putting it in to avoid the Battle Creek TFR.

Quite a few clouds about.  I was at 3,500 and couldn't get above for awhile. 

 

 

Then I got a break in the clouds and climbed to 7,500.

But I soon had to descend as the clouds further ahead were going up higher than I could climb. So I descended to 5,500 to make a clear way through and maintain VFR.

I got handed overt to Detroit Approach and they noted a large area of heavy (and unforecast precipitation) between me and Pontiac. I could actually see the area of heavy rain. Heavy enough that it blocked out all visibility, and the rain shadow was visible for a good distance.

So, I diverted south to avoid it, and then once past it and with sufficient distance away, I resumed heading back to Pontiac.  I got the weather at Pontiac, and got handed off to Tower, and entered the downwind for Runway 27L, but was then switched to 27R and made a nice landing.

That's 1.4 there and 1.2 back and two very nice landings, and a great time in Kalamazoo.

The Air Zoo: The Space Exhibit

In addition to it's fine focus on Aviation, the Air Zoo has an extensive exhibit dedicated to space flight and space exploration.

The exhibit begins with early rockets like a V2,  and full size examples of the RIM-8 Talos missile:

And it moves on to manned spaceflight and they've got a mock-up of a Mercury Capsule:

 

They have an actual Gemini Capsule Trainer vehicle on display:

Notice how small the interior is:

Amazing how astronauts could even fit inside, it barely had room for their big brass ones, let alone the rest of themselves.

And they've got El Kabong! 

Not Quick Draw McGraw but the actual El Kabong that was drop tested as part of the Gemini program to see if they could return the Gemini capsules to land rather than splashing them down into the ocean after re-entry.  It was not a success.

I wonder if it sounded like "Kabong!" or "Kaboing!" or just "Thump!" when it hit the ground during the testing.

There's also exhibits regarding what living quarters look like on the the ISS, and even coke cans that came back from the MIR space station:

Apparently Coke is as refreshing in space as it is on earth.

Lots  and lots of cool space stuff.

Then there's some space fantasy through the ages, including a neat exhibit on how space exploration, aliens, and robots have been depicted in cinema:

And it wouldn't be the future without some might-have-beens, including this actual Milner Motors Air Car, a flying car:

Were were promised flying cars and instead what we got was 144 characters and woke pronouns.  

Then again, given how I've seen most people drive, a flying car for the general populace raises lots and lots of issues.

The Space Exhibit at the Air Zoo is worth the price of admission for the entire museum all by itself.

Air Zoo: World War 2 Aviation Display

Leaving the Guadalcanal exhibit, the museum takes you to the excellent display of multiple World War Two aircraft in their collection.

The Grumman FM-2 Wildcat, a higher-performance and the most numerous variant of the F4F Wildcat.

 The F6F Hellcat, the sucessor to the Wildcat on the Navy's larger aircraft carriers, whike the FM-2 and other Wildcats continued serving on the light and escort carriers:

 The FG-1D Corsair

The Douglas SBD-3 Dauntless

The Slow-But-Deadly dive bomber that hammered the Japanese aircraft carriers at Midway.

There's also trainers from the period, including the first aircraft acquired for the museum, a Boeing Stearman:

There's not only Naval and Pacific theater aircraft, there's lots more on display, including a rare  original WACO CG-4 Hadrian Glider, a displayed in the colors of one of the four that was sponsored by the Greenville Schools in Michigan from student funding during World War 2 and built by the Gibson Refrigerator Company of Greenville.  

The Glider it is painted in the colors of the 45th glider that landed during the Normandy invasion.

There's a also a C-47 on display and interestingly, some of the dummy paratroops that were dropped to confuse the Germans during the early hours of D-Day:

It's a Bird, It's A Plane, It's A Decoy!

Rather neat.

Tons of things to see in that room alone.

The Air Zoo: Find The Sniper!

The Air Zoo is not solely dedicated to Aviation.

It also has a detailed exhibit regarding the Campaign at Guadalcanal.

Why?  Because the founder of the museum, Preston "Pete" Parish served as a Marine Lieutenant during the campaign, and his best friend was killed there. 

There are detailed dioramas of the naval battles around Guadalcanal, exhibits of uniforms and many other  informational items that make the past come alive.

 

 

The museum has the only extant piece of the USS Juneau, part of Task Force 67 and sunk by a Japanese submarine during the campaign.  The five Sullivan brothers died in the sinking of USS Juneau:

As to spotting the sniper:

Can you find him before he gets you?

 

He's right there somewhere.

 

He's right there.

He's There!

 

A very impressive and educational (good addition juvat) exhibit about one of the most hard-fought battles and pivotal campaigns in the Pacific in World War II.

Air Zoo - That Looks Just Like A Messerschmitt

It looks at first glance just like a Messerschmitt BF-109.

 

So much so that this very aircraft even stood in for a BF-109 in the classic film Battle of Britain starring Michael Caine, Sir Laurence Olivier and many others:

It's not a BF-109, it's a Buchon HA-1112, a copy of the Messerschmitt BF-109 produced under license in Spain.

It is now back in Spanish Air Force Livery and on display at the museum, after originally being displayed in it's Luftwaffe paint job it wore during the film.

The Buchon had a different engine than the original due to German inability to supply sufficient Daimler Benz engines and instead used the Hispano-Suiza engine which gave the aircraft a major right turning tendency on takeoff as it has a counter-clockwise propeller rotation, compared to the Daimler-Benz's clockwise rotation that the airframew was designed to handle.  

This last variant of the Buchon uses a 1,600 hp Rolls-Royce Merlin 500-45 engine rather than the 1,300HP Hispano-Suiza and has two 20 mm Hispano-Suiza 404/408 cannons and the Buchons served in the Spanish Air Force until December 1965.

Some Jets From The Air Zoo

The Air Zoo main hall has quite a few notable jets:

An F-14 Tomcat

 

 

An F-8 Crusader, the last gunfighter. 

An F-18

An A-4 Skyhawk in Australian livery:

These are just the jets in the main hall.

There's also one of the world's earliest jet propelled devices on display:  The V-1 Dooodlebug".