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The Scotts / Miracle Gro company has become s sponsor of the Warbird Alley at the EAA convention site. Besides a nice looking grass area, there is a new presentation pad where the Warbirds in Review programs were held. A permanent Veterans Tribute monument is also part of the area. The new Scotts Warbird Alley provides improved access and a memorable setting for these rare aircraft.

Next year is the 100th anniversary of Naval Aviation. A commission has been set up with the mission to honor a century of mission-ready men and women and recognize unique avitaion-related achievements through event driven celebrations.

Of the 34 special commemoration events, a couple include June 25-26 at the National Guard Association of Rhode Island Open House, and the EAA Fly-In Convention on July 25 – August 1. Navy aviators will participate in air shows, fly-overs, special demonstrations, static displays and industry booths.

For further information…

I’ll post more important information later, but here’s the free stuff I got at the Saturday event.

Mercy Hospital / Springfield Armor T-Shirt
Mohegan Sun T-Shirt
Mohegan Sun bottle opener
Peter Pan Bus beach ball
TD Bank lighted yo-yo
TD Bank tissues.

Saturday was the day to see airplanes flying and a huge crowd. Today has 1600′ overcast, so I’ll bet not much is flying.

Today we spent much of the day at the Electric Aircraft Symposium. I left for a bit to catch a different program on the advances in radio controlled model aircraft. It’s sure changed since the days when I was a kid making balsa wood models.

We’ve got several sources for photos and video clips around the airport. We’ll be starting to put them together on Sunday.

The airplane auction will be held Saturday night. They have some unique aircraft including a Stinson SR-10 built for and flown by the Shell Oil Company VP Jimmy Doolittle, the former WWII hero; Monocoupe 110 Special, a one-of-a-kind aircraft customized remake from the Golden Era of air racing from the 1920’s and 1930’s; Grumman FM-2 Wildcat; Songbird III, a 1960 Cessna 310D used in the 1960’s television series “Sky King” and the only remaining aircraft from that show.

At the Vision of Eagles dinner last night, the SR-71 Ford Mustang sold for $375,000 with proceeds going to the Young Eagles program. The Mustang modifications were designed by Jack Rouch and Caroll Shelby. Rouch was injured in a landing accident here on Wednesday afternoon, and is reported to still be in serious, but stable, condition.

The Mustang has design elements similar to the SR-71 aircraft styling. It has been so heavily modified, that it isn’t street legal any longer.

The entire night activities raised about $2.1 million for the program

I saw Paul Poberezny still driving around in his VW bug on the grounds today. It’s great to see him still so active.

Seminars I went to today were Burt Rutan’s presentation on the future opportunities in commercial space, and Mark Moore from NASA spoke on Advanced Electric Aircraft Concepts. I’ll post summaries on them next week, or during my train trip back on Sunday.

I also went down to the Ultralight area today. Besides some of the new Part 103 legal planes, there was a very interesting DC3. Since there are so many DC3s on the site, they couldn’t be put in one area, so they are scattered around. One in that area isn’t the prettiest, but it certainly is the most authentic on the site. It underwent a very rapid clean up and complete inspection and was given the intensive repairs that were needed from the derelict condition, and the lack of maintenance log books which required performing or verifying all airworthiness directives that were applicable to this aircraft. From mold growing on the plane, to the removed engines laying on pallets nearby, the massive amount of work resulted in a great plane coming back to the sky instead of turning into soda cans. I’ll post some photos from the inside later on.

Tomorrow, most of the day will be spent at the electric airplane symposium. I hope to find some new applications for battery power.

Here’s some photos showing the work going on with updates to the convention site.

Steve’s AirVenture Site Updates.

Here are some points made during the last webinar about the EAA Convention updates.

Advance ticket sales are up 25% from last year.

Site construction will have new showers in the North camping area, chip seal roads in the area south of the main entrance, expansion to hangar C, and new concrete pad in warbirds area. 44 wi-fi hotspots will be added.

2 more web cams. One on the Vintage tower toward AeroShell Square. The other in the north area on the E-W runway.

Homebuilder’s Hangar will have speakers from the development of kit planes, demonstrations of items originally presented in the Hints for Homebuilders video series.

Some new planes that will be at the event:
Cobalt CA-50 prototype
V-22 Ospry
2 F-4 Phantoms
Sikorsky S-38
PBY4-2 Firebomber
Seafire
Falcon 50 with new spiroidal wingtips (wingtip loops around back to the wing.

F-22 will not be there. They were needed for operations.

Adam hinted someone who hasn’t emphasized airplanes in a while will unveil a new plane at the Homebuilder’s area,.

The Homebuilt parking and camping area is expanded by taking away from the Red parking area.

The Federal Aviation Administration said this week that data from the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, which flies unmanned systems on border patrols shows a total of 5,688 flight hours from Fiscal Year 2006 to July 13, 2010. The CBP accident rate is 52.7 accidents per 100,000 flight hours. This accident rate is more than seven times the general aviation accident rate (7.11 accidents/100,000 flight hours) and 353 times the commercial aviation accident rate (0.149 accidents/100,000 flight hours).

Safety a big target in letting unmanned aircraft in national airspace | NetworkWorld.com Community.

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