Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Quonset Air Museum Field Trip

We had a field trip to today to Quonset Air Museum in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.

Let's take a moment to pay homage to our flag. It was huge.

The were so many restored planes and helicopters.
Tae and Morgan had a blast in the cockpits.

The warehouse where the planes were kept was very old.

Tae and Morgan getting eaten by the plane.

Patrick, Tae and Morgan explore the inside of one the huge helicopters.

Pilot Tae.

How cute.
If anyone has an abandoned plane they would like to get rid of, our kids would surely love to have one to play with in the backyard.
I have no idea what the names of all the planes were.

Can you say claustrophobic?

These were really cool. They are hand drawn flight plans. Basically the crew that was on a mission would fly over the area and draw what they saw. See the white out? We learned that they used the same map over and over and just erased the lines or painted over them to draw new maps or adjust the layout of the places they already visited. No computer coordinates and printouts back then.

Here's another one. It even shows the storms, clouds and bad weather that the crew ran into during their mission.

This is a picture of Charles Lindbergh Jr. who stopped at Quonset in 1927.

Some of the pilot space was so small. The seats were hard as a rock and I can't imagine flying for such a long time in these things.

I have no idea what this suit was for. I'm guessing it was fireproof. Tae said it was for space aliens and so wanted to bring it home.

We learned some history on the Wright Brothers.

Top right is Orville and bottom left is Wilber Wright. I love the old pictures of them.

Tae's imagination ran wild today. Here he is jumping out of the plane with his homemade parachute (coat). He so loved the controls on all the planes. Who knows-maybe he won't be a weatherman......maybe I see a pilot in his future. I think we have a few years to decide.

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