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Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Plymouth Air Show, Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA

Many folks turned out for the Plymouth Airshow held at the Plymouth Municipal Airport.

There were little planes and bigger planes......

......the always popular stunt biplane trailing smoke.....

...but this little model really was a crowd-pleaser.  It has a jet engine and when the pilot powered it up, taxiied out, and took off, it sounded just like a "real" jet.  Instead of the typical model airplane buzzing sound one normally associates with model aircraft, the unmistakeable whine of this jet engine was awesome and sounded like a full size jet. 

Parts of the taxiways and runways were open to rambling spectators under a partially overcast sky with air temperature at 75 degrees - doesn't get much more perfect than that.

Will this little fellow grow up to be a pilot some day?  Maybe the seed is being planted right here today.

An open cockpit biplane.

The man with the coolest beard checking out an experimental helicopter.

One of the static displays - certainly the brightest wingtip I've ever seen.

And this is probably the shiniest airplane I've ever seen.

This ultralight, the Quicksilver, evolved from a motorized fixed-wing hang glider in the 1970's and is still popular today among open air ultralight fliers.

A rotary engine on a 1953 twin beech.

It's not too often that regular folk get to stand this close to a runway.

An open cockpit biplane from the barnstormer era.

Pilots are very focused on using checklists so that very few things are left to chance or memory.  An additional assist is to attach bright streamers on critical parts. It's hard to forget something when you put a big red flag on it.  It's like remembering to take your lunch to work - a trick I used was to put my car keys next to the lunch bag in the refrigerator - impossible to forget since I had to have my keys to start the car - worked every time - but it sure made the keys feel cold if I put them in my pocket!



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