Track planes going to EAA 2008; B-17, Ford Tri-motor, J.W. French
EAA AirVenture 2008 logo
For the EAA Airventure 2008, the SPOT has outfitted key planes with SPOT satellite messengers for GPS tracking and flight following. Starting immediately, aviation fans can follow along online in real time at the SPOT website. http://www.findmespot.com/eaa.aspx
Planes to track include:
| B-17 Flying Fortress Thunderbird (Lone Star Flight Museum) |
 Click the title or picture to see the SPOT shared page. The B-17 Flying Fortress was used by the Army Air Corps to fly strategic bombing missions over Europe during World War II. The four-engine, heavy-duty bomber was armed with .50 caliber machine guns and 5,000 pounds of bombs. Over the course of the war, 13,000 B-17s were produced, of which only 13 are still airworthy today.
Thunderbird currently resides at the Lone Star Flight Museum in Galveston, Texas, and is painted in the colors of one of the aircraft from the 303rd bomb group.
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| Ford Tri-Motor 4AT-A (Greg Herrick/Golden Wings Museum) |
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Courtesy of Airport Journals
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Click the title or picture to see the SPOT shared page.
The Ford Tri-motor, nicknamed “The Tin Goose,” was an American three-engine civil transport aircraft first produced in 1925 by Henry Ford. The Ford Tri-motor used an all-metal construction, which was beyond the standard in the 1920s. Its wings were made of aluminum and corrugated for added strength. More than 100 worldwide airlines flew the Ford Tri-motor while it was in production.
Before Greg Herrick acquired the 4AT-A, it was flown by Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart, and made the first commercial flights from the U.S. to Mexico City and over the Canadian Rockies. After obtaining it in the mid-1980s, Herrick began restoring the tri-motor after years of preservation. As of 2006, the Tri-motor has been in flying condition and restored to its December 1927 appearance. Herrick’s Tri-motor is the oldest flying type example of the 18 remaining aircraft in the world. |
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Visit http://www.findmespot.com/eaa.aspx for a complete list.
Categories: Events · GPS · findmespot · spot messenger
Tagged: Airventure, Airventure 2008, B-17, eaa, flight following, flight path, Ford Tri-Motor, GPS, gps tracking, OshKosh, SPOT
1 response so far ↓
Gary Bullard // August 25, 2008 at 4:57 pm |
The plane in the picture is not a Ford Tri-Motor. I don’t know what it is. My first plane ride was in a Tri-Motor when I was 5 years old. They offered rides at the airport every Sunday for a quarter.