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Yvon Hawke
05-22-2006, 11:32 AM
When I was 14 years old, it was 1987. My father, a retired Captain of the Air Force, brought me to the museum for the first time. It was a lot of fun seeing all of the 300+ aircraft at the time. We returned two years later and they had acquired some more aircraft, artifacts, etc.

I never returned to the museum until May of 2002 when I turned 30. And was I impressed? Absolutely. Not onlt was it the aircraft additions, but my father and I had 2 good days there and I stopped to pay attention to the little things, the sentimentl things, the personal things, the things that, as a kid, I just couldn't appreciate at the time. But, after the 2002 visit, I became a member of the museum.

We returned, again, one year later, but it felt as if we were just there the day before. But, the addition of a new exhibit hangar was nearing completion and dedicated to the Cold War, of which, was my father's era.

We haven't been back since, but I keep up with the goings on there and maintain my membership happily.

The museum's recent acquisitions are the Memphis Belle this past winter and the Hanoi Taxi a couple weeks back. They are also in the process of receiving shipments of portions of the XC-99 that will be completely rebuilt and restored after decades of neglect in New Mexico.

I recommend anyone to visit the web site and see what they've got on there. And if you live close enough, or can do some traveling, I highly recommend going there.

The URL to the site is http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/

Enjoy1

Spinner
05-22-2006, 1:10 PM
The Wright-Patterson Airforce Base site is one of many that often cant be connected to from outside the US.
This can be overcome by using a proxy within the US. Also by useing archive.org to fill the same function works.

Meshfan
05-22-2006, 3:01 PM
Sweet, they have an F-22 Raptor there.

I've never been to many of the US states........... just California, Maryland, New York, and Nevada <----Las Vegas baby!

Yvon Hawke
05-22-2006, 3:18 PM
The raptor's very sweet. Got a good closeup view of that puppy. Though, it's the testbed and doesn't have the good engines.

deltacharlie
05-23-2006, 12:27 AM
I used to live in Ohio, and my best friend's mother worked (may still work?) as a civilian at Wright-Patterson AFB on projects such as the B-1. I went to the museum when I was around 7 or 8 years old...so unfortunately I don't remember much. I remember having a total blast when I was there, but that's about it. Didn't really take any photos, but we bought a book about the museum, and I read it cover-to-cover many times growing up. It was written in the '60s or '70s, I believe, so it's incredibly out of date, but I didn't care. :) The other thing I remember is that my dad bought my brothers and I each a plastic model of the Wright Brothers original flyer and we went home and put them together.

I now live 3000 miles away from WPAFB, but I wish I'd gone again at least once when I was older to check it out. Maybe one day when I have kids I can take 'em back.

~DC