I’ve finally made good on my threat to reorganize this site’s photo gallery. If you go over there now, you’ll find that I have folded everything into three basic groupings: Random Snapshots, Travels, and Diversions. The “Random Snapshots” album remains unchanged since the last time you may have looked at it; it’s your basic grab-bag of personal subjects that most of you probably won’t care about, i.e., miscellaneous photos of myself, my girl, friends, etc. “Travels” is self-explanatory. And the “Diversions” album is where you’ll find photos of things I’d like to share, but which don’t quite fit into the other two categories, things like my warbird flight experience or some of the weird stuff I’ve been involved in or which interests me. For example, I plan to put up a sub-album showing you how my father and I once transformed a twenty-foot-long classic automobile into a rolling replica of the RMS Titanic, complete with the movie characters Jack and Rose on the “bow.” If that makes no sense to you, be patient; you will understand at some point in the (hopefully) near future…
In the meantime, check out the latest addition to the gallery, a selection of shots taken yesterday as Anne and I toured the B-17 Fuddy Duddy with her parents. (In my earlier posts, I was under the impression that the plane coming to Ogden this past weekend was the Aluminum Overcast, but I found out yesterday that the Overcast was damaged in a bad landing a year ago and is currently undergoing a complete overhaul and restoration. The Fuddy is owned by the same organization, the Experimental Aircraft Association, and has been filling the other plane’s tour obligations.)
The Fuddy Duddy is a beautiful example of this model — it includes most of the vintage equipment that a B-17 would’ve carried back in the day, including one of the legendary Norden bomb sights and a stack of radio equipment the size of your average filing cabinet. I also liked the Fuddy‘s color scheme, which consists largely of the plane’s own aluminum skin, unpainted and polished to a shiny finish. (The nose-art was disappointingly tame, however.) This plane is fitted out a bit differently than the Nine o’ Nine, the last B-17 I toured, so it’s easier for tourists to negotiate a walk-through, and I would imagine that it’s also fairly comfortable for those who choose to take a flight: unlike the B-24 I flew on, this B-17 actually has jumpseats for passengers to sit in during take-offs and landings. (I had to sit on the floor when I flew on the Dragon…)
Incidentally, touring that particular aircraft on Father’s Day had a special significance for Anne’s dad, whose own father built B-17s for Boeing during the war. I can only guess what he must’ve been feeling as he imagined his late father’s hands working the metal, installing avionics, or pounding in rivets. (Unfortunately, no one in the family is quite sure of what Anne’s grandpa actually did on the Boeing line, aside from “building B-17s.”)
