Photo of the Day - Stearman Trainer

[tbutler]

Stearman biplane trainer, WW II vintage; Airline History Museum, Kansas City Downtown Airport.

Comments

[tbutler]

Yes, they've always been one of my favorites. :)

Kansas actually has a pretty strong presence in aviation. Wichita was the home of several aviation pioneers in the 20's; it's still the headquarters of Beechcraft and Cessna; and was where Boeing built the B-29s in WWI II and many other aircraft later, and serviced Air Force One up to a couple of years ago. The Kansas Cosmosphere, in Hutchison about 30 miles away, is probably the largest space museum outside of NASA or the Smithsonian, and a major restoration center (they built the Apollo 13 sets for the Ron Howard movie, and restored Liberty Bell 7 when it was fished out of the ocean.)

Other aviation museums I love - the National Air and Space, of course; the USAF museum in Dayton OH is also very nice (and quite large). The Kalamazoo Air Zoo is another really great air museum where you wouldn't think there'd be one. (And it's close enough to the Henry Ford museum that you could do both in one trip! :) A friend of mine is from up in that area, and a couple of summers ago a group of us went on a 3-fer trip; the Air Zoo, the Henry Ford, and Cedar Point amusement park. [He's a roller coaster nut, and Cedar Point is one of the best coaster parks in the world.])