Warbirds

We may have been able to get to Waupaca today but we didn't even try. Today's forecast was 40-50% chance for thunder storms. Waupaca is about 220 miles North of Kankakee. At 6:30 this morning the radar was filled with nasty storms half way between us and Waupaca.

After breakfast we went over to the airport to get something out of the plane. The Collins Foundation had three WWII planes on display at the airport. Two bombers, a B-17 and a B-24 and a P-51 Mustang fighter. These are all in flying condition. We found out they were leaving today. They are on a tour with the planes and were heading up to Chicago. So we stuck around to watch.

Late in the morning a bunch of tail draggers (look it up) came into the airport just before a tail of the storm reached down to Kankakee. It was neat to see all them too. They are also heading towards the big show in Oshkosh.

The warbirds were starting to pack up and load the planes so we gave Christy, the flight engineer, a hand loading up the B-24. She had a bunch of oil jugs to load. The B-24 has four engines which each take 25 GALLONS of oil. After loading up, Christy climbed up on the wings to check the oil. We helped her with that too, from the ground.

She told us they run the engines at a reduced RPM compared to the way the military ran them in the war (full throttle). At the reduced RPM they use 50 gallons of gas per hour, per engine. 200 gallons per hour! Who knows how much gas they used per hour at full throttle.

About 2pm, after the storms had moved off to the East, the tail draggers took off and headed North. The weather was clear enough for the rest of the afternoon that they probably made it to Oshkosh. Maybe we'll get a chance to go tomorrow. Maybe not, the forecast is the same for tomorrow.

Here is the link for the Collins Foundation.
http://www.collingsfoundation.org/menu.htm

Here are some photos of today's fun.

B-17

B-24

P-51