Aviation museums

Flying Dreams

Odyssey Magazine, Fall 2000

Life on a higher plane

Aviation museums show us the world from a new perspective.

With its delicate structure of varnished wood and wide wings covered in pure white muslin, the hand-built replica of the Wright Flyer suspended from the rafters of a Florida hangar is a work of art. It can also kill you, as Ken Kellett knows all too well.

"I'm the only human, other than Wilbur and Orville, who has actually flown one of these aircraft," Ken says, as he begins the "backlot tour" at Fantasy of Flight, an aviation museum in Polk City, Florida. About half of Ken's flights in the replica ended with splintered wood and broken parts -- the Flyer is cranky and unstable, as the Wright Brothers discovered at Kitty Hawk. But the brothers persevered, and that one little airplane gave birth to a whole new world of flying machines.

The Flyer, and the risks men endured to get it off the ground, is a testimony to the strength of our urge to fly. Today we take flying for granted, riding all over the world in cramped, crowded jets at 500 miles per hour. But deep down, we know that's not real flying. We still yearn to feel the wind; we long to touch the clouds and explore the sky. We dream about it; we feel it in our bones when we look up to see a small airplane buzzing overhead, and sigh for what we wish flying could be Ñ romantic and filled with adventure. Fantasy of Flight is one of scores of aviation museums scattered across the country that try to create that sense of romance, to capture that adventurous spirit. Every aircraft in every hangar comes with a story of its own: where it was born, how it lived, its journeys and exploits. And at Fantasy of Flight, nearly all the aircraft on display are still airworthy -- and every afternoon one of the vintage planes is hauled outside to play.

But before you even reach the bright hangar full of one-of-a-kind airplanes and the behind-the-scenes backlot tour, Fantasy of Flight immerses you in an imaginary world filled with the sights and sounds of aviation. In the museum's artistically designed exhibit area, breezes blow, stars twinkle in a night sky, biplanes fight overhead as you cringe inside a trench on the Western Front, and the pounding throb of four hard-working engines fills the cockpit of a World War II-era B-17 Flying Fortress.

The legendary B-17s were the workhorses of the Allies' aerial offensive. They dropped bombs and fought off enemy planes, and were loved by their crews for their ability to limp home even with heavy damage. At Fantasy of Flight, a restored B-17B with a 103-foot wingspan sits majestically in a darkened hangar, lit by the headlamps of a Jeep. The setting evokes a wintry airfield, with stacks of supplies, a mechanic working on an engine, even a patch of forest nearby.

Inside the ship, you can feel what it must have been like to fly along on one of those missions. You can smell the leather in the radioman's flight suit as he leans anxiously over his set, and hear the static and voices on the radio. You can peer into the claustrophobic spaces where the navigator and bombardier whiled away the long, tense hours. The waist gunners, a placard explains, had to be careful not to shoot the wings of their own airplane, while dealing with turbulence, the pilots' maneuvers, and enemy fire. Even from this safe distance, fifty years in the future, it's enough to make you shiver with dread -- and marvel at the courage and tenacity of those crews.

After immersing yourself in the 1940s, it's a startling change to emerge into the bright, modern Showplace Hangars. Here, the museum's eclectic aircraft collection is on display. The collection is unusual in that all of it is privately funded by one Kermit Weeks, a world-class aerobatics champion and founder of the museum. Kermit has personally bought and paid for every airplane here -- not to mention every building, artifact, and paper clip on the property.

Ken Kellett, aircraft restorer and tour guide, speaks of Kermit with a mixture of awe and bewilderment -- as if he were a sort of Wizard of Oz, a force of nature with the power and magic to create worlds of his own. "Why did he buy this particular airplane?" Ken wonders aloud, as he shows a tour group a tattered and ancient wreck in a storage hangar. Then he answers his own question: "I guess when you can have anything you want, you can have anything you want."

The hangars and backlot tour offer plenty of chances to get up close and personal with the airplanes -- you can climb into cockpits, fly a simulated fighter mission, ride on a helicopter exhibit, and watch as one of the vintage planes is pulled outdoors and launched from the private runway out back. And if you get that irresistible urge to slip the surly bonds of Earth, you can sign up for an introductory flight with an instructor in a two-seater ultralight. Take the controls and find out for yourself what it's really like to enter the third dimension.

The back-to-basics ultralight airplane represents the far end of the aviation spectrum from the B-17. It has no mission in life other than flying for its own sake. The Experimental Aircraft Association celebrates exactly that kind of flight, and the creative spirit that brings flying machines into the world. At the EAA's sprawling AirVenture Museum and Pioneer Airport, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, you can discover aircraft built for speed racing, round-the-world endurance, exploring the Amazon, or drawing airshow audiences. You'll find biplanes and tri-motors, fuselages of wood and carbon composites, primitive engines and modern jets, the classic and the cutting-edge.

Pioneer Airport recreates the golden years of aviation, that brief, glamorous time between the wars when Lindbergh and Earhart flew, airmail routes were explored, and barnstormers in war-surplus Jenny biplanes landed in open meadows to sell rides to farmers and their children. Flying circuses traveled from town to town, introducing the public to the capabilities of airplanes, and the first airlines began passenger service.

On a summer day, the perfect green grass of Pioneer Airport's runway glows under a wide blue sky, as the EAA's vintage Ford Tri-motor rumbles in for another load of passengers, as if transported from that golden era. The ungainly Tri-motor, known affectionately as the "Tin Goose," is renowned as the aircraft that paved the way for modern air travel. Noisy but reliable, it carried a dozen or so pampered passengers enticed by onboard restrooms, stand-up headroom, and stewardess service. Its all-metal construction and the Ford name lent it an aura of infallibility, which was enhanced in 1929 when Admiral Richard E. Byrd made the world's first flight over the South Pole in a Tri-motor. The Tin Goose helped to convince the public that air travel was safe and practical.

The Tri-motor is one of several vintage aircraft that takes airport visitors up for a glimpse of the earth from above, and a taste of flying as it used to be. A 1929 Travelair open-cockpit biplane and a Bell 47 "bubble" helicopter also offer rides into the wild blue.