For those of you who have followed my posts, my wife and I are involved in a museum in Newton, dedicated to America's first business aircraft, known as "Smiling Thru". The volunteers of EAA Chapter 456 have restored the hangar, and someday we'd like to build a replica of the aircraft, itself.
Because of the flood in Iowa City, we got a surprise visit by the same type of aircraft that "Smiling Thru" used to be, a 1929 Travel Air 6000B. Here's a picture of it in front of our hangar/museum, yesterday....
http://www.newtondailynews.com/artic...ews/local2.txt 
The hangar isn't completely finished, inside, and we kind of are on the wrong continent to staff it, but we were glad to see a "real" Travel Air sitting in front of the museum.
BTW - Travel Air was an aviation company formed in the 1920s by three guys by the names of Cessna, Stearman and Beech. You might've heard of them, if you know aviation. And Charles Lindbergh was turned down, when he tried to buy a Travel Air to fly the Atlantic, and was forced to buy a Ryan, instead....
Interesting story: Walter Beech wanted to sell Lindbergh a Travel Air, but had already promised to build too many and didn't want to break his word. But his faith in Lindbergh was great enough that he cabled a flower-shop in Paris to deliver roses to him when he heard Lindbergh had taken off.
Linear Mode
