Today, Jan 10th 2010 marks the centennial of the Dominguez Air Meet. The first flight west of the Rockies happened here a hundred years ago as well as a number of then-world records broken. This event was also the 1st major aviation event in the US.

We have written about this landmark event in the 3rd part of our “Aviation History” Series back in September.

The U.S. Postal Service will unveil a postmark cancellation stamp commemorating the air meet’s centennial.

The Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum is really leading the pack in giving this event its due and is doing a year-long series of events on the air-meet. As part of the series, on June 12th, there will be a re-creation of the air meet with hot air balloons, antique airplanes and other aviation exhibits displayed.

AOPA is participating in an event on Jan 14th in Carson, CA. 

For more information, check out the schedule of events at http://dominguezrancho.org/2010-2/

On New Year’s Day, low tides caused by the blue moon unraveled one of the earliest British aircraft and the first Vickers production aircraft on an Antarctic icescape.

The Vickers monoplane was built in 1911 and was ditched in 1914 after a short career in the air and a slightly longer career as a tractor.

The airplane was transported from Britain to Australia, where it crashed during a demo flight which was to also be its last flight. The crash damaged the airplane so badly that the wings had to be removed.

Sir Mawson then converted the airplane to a “tractor”, kept the propeller, attached skis controlled by the rudder and a specially designed tail and hoped to break world longest taxi record.

Unfortunately, the engine could not operate in the subzero temperatures and the airplane was ditched in Cape Denison in 1914.

Apparently, three teams of conservationists and scientists have used magnetic imaging equipment, without success, since 1996 to try to find the fuselage.

Mr Jensen, the chairman of the Mawson’s Huts Foundation, said: “It was probably one chance in a million that these conditions just allowed us to spot it.”

I guess it’s one of those things that happen once in a blue moon.

I recently stumbled upon a very exciting resource for aviation history geeks like myself. Flight Global has an archive of aviation news, pictures, cutaways, etc. from 1909 to 2005. It is an amazing resource. 

For example, In aviation news from today, 12/4 – 100 years ago i1909, we can read about a monoplane constructed by Howard T. Wright (a British aircraft builder – not a forgotten Wright Brother..) 27 ft wide by 28 ft. long, weighing 500lbs with motor – a 30 HP air-cooled motor.

Just a little over a year later in Dec. 18th 2010, a Howard T. Wright biplane set a new cross-country world record flying 169 miles from England to Belgium – flown by Thomas (“Tommy”, a.k.a Sir Thomas) Sopwith when he was 22 years old.

Tom Sopwith himself went on to found the Sopwith Aircraft Company in 1912 – a major manufacturer of WW-I military aircraft – many animal-named (such as “Pup” or “Camel”) which gave the company a nickname “The Flying Zoo”.

Interestingly, Tom Sopwith lived to a remarkably old age – especially for anyone involved in aviation in those days. He lived to be 101 years old and died in 1989.

The long-awaited (at least for aviation history buffs) film about Amelia Earhart comes out next Friday.

Amelia Earhart has been an inspiration for generations of women (and men) around the world. A recent New York Times article by Judith Thurman called “missing woman” captures her story and the times she lived in very well. I highly recommend reading it.

Ms. Earhart played a major role in Southern California’s aviation history. Her career started here and many of her greatest achievements happened here.

I hope you get a chance to watch the movie. Have a great weekend!

I wrote about the “portal of the folded wings” almost a month ago and in it I mentioned Charlie Taylor who is buried there amongst other aviation pioneers.

Charlie Taylor built the first aircraft engine in the world for the Wright Brothers. And it didn’t take him that long either – 6 weeks from concept to first flight.

Not bad for a bicycle mechanic.

Charlie was in charge of running the bicycle business while the brothers were flying their gliders. Then he was ask to build a wind tunnel for the project, which served to test the first concepts of the Wright Flyer.

in 1902, the brothers felt that they were ready to attach an engine to their glider and could not find anything suitable in the existing market. They asked Charlie if he can do it.

Here’s Charlie’s recollection of what happened:

We didn’t make any drawings. One of us would sketch out the part we were talking about on a piece of scratch paper, and I’d spike the sketch over my bench. It took me six weeks to make that engine. The only metal working machines we had were a lathe and a drill press, run by belts from a stationary gas engine. The crankshaft was made out of a block of machine steel 6" by 31" by 1 5/8" thick. I traced the outline on the slab and then drilled through with the drill press until I could knock out the surplus pieces with a hammer and chisel. Then I put it is [sic] the lathe and turned it down to size and smoothness. While I was doing all this work on the engine, Will and Orv were busy upstairs working on the airframe. They asked me to make the metal parts, such as the small fittings where the wooden struts joined the spars and the truss wires were attached. There weren’t any turnbuckles in the truss wires, so the fit had to be just so. It was so tight we had to force the struts into position."

This started an industry that today makes over $130 Billion a year.

Once the engine was ready, Charlie says:

"We block-tested the motor (then) got everything crated and on the train. There was no ceremony about it, even among ourselves. The boys had been making these trips for four years, and this was the third time I had been left to run the shop. If there was any worry about the flying machine not working, they never showed it and I never felt it. Even when they got home (after the first successful flight) there was no special celebration in the shop. They were always thinking of the next thing to do; they didn’t waste much time worrying about the past."

Charlie came to California as a mechanic for aviation pioneer Calbraith Perry Rodgers in 1911. Rodgers acquired a new Wright machine and offered Charles $10 a day plus expenses to be his mechanic on a trip from Long Island to California. Charlie traveled by special train to repair the plane every night and after any mishap.

This was the first coast-to-coast airplane crossing of the continental United States took off on September 17th 1911 from Sheepshead Bay, NY and Landed in Pasadena, CA 47 days later of November 5th, with 83 flying hours and 68 stopovers.

It is amazing how dedicated and unassuming those early aviation pioneers were and how much we owe to such as small group of innovators. If you get a chance, go visit the Portal of The Folded Wings, or just take a flight from nearby Burbank airport, either way you’ll be paying a tribute to Charlie’s work – whether you know it or not.

It is Fleet Week once again in San Francisco this week and amongst Blue-Angles and other aerobatic wonders, there’s one event that is taking place that we’d like to single out because we find it very inspirational.

Julie Clark has a motto:  “If you can dream it, you can do it” and she has practiced this throughout her life.

Born to an aviator father, she endured a number of family tragedies at a young age that would have discouraged most people from ever following their dreams – her mother choked to death when she was 14. And one year later, when she was 15 – in 1964 – her dad, a pilot for Pacific Airlines was shot dead in the cockpit by a disturbed passenger while flying an F-27 with 44 passengers on board. All on-board perished when the aircraft crashed in San Ramon.  

Overcoming these tremendous obstacles, Julie learned to fly at 21 and became a civilian instructor for the Navy. She then became one of the first female commercial pilots – a position she held for over 3 decades.

Julie has been flying air shows for nearly that long. Her bird is a beautiful, modified, T-34 aptly named “Free Spirit”.

If you are in the Bay Area this weekend, come and see Julie perform and pay tribute to a living chapter of aviation history.

Over the last decades, many airlines have gone under. But rarely has one ever been shut down because the federal entity governing it went away. Such was the case with Interflug (formerly Lufthansa East), the East German state-owned airline, which was shut down when East and West Germany unified 19 years ago.

In a case like this, what happens to the planes and the airline personnel? The German magazine “Der Spiegel” has an interesting piece on the demise of Interflug. In the case of pilots and other personnel, they got either transferred to Lufthansa or found new jobs, some of them as far away as in Taiwan.

The situation was different with regards to aircraft. The German government only kept the 3 new Airbus planes that Interflug had. All of the older aircraft, mainly Tupolevs and Ilyushins, were either sold or scrapped. A number of IL-62’s, IL-18’s and TU-134’s are still in use in Russia, Asia, Africa and Australia. Some of the scrapped aircraft are used for training purposes, mainly by local firefighters that are stationed at various airports in the eastern part of Germany. Others are in aircraft museums and one IL-14P (pictured above), which was converted into a restaurant, is now parked next to a car dealership in Cämmerswalde.

If you think FlyMiwok invented metropolitan air travel, unfortunately for us, you are mistaken.

Blimp #6 in Paris in 1903. Source: Getty Images.

In the early 1900’s, the Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont became famous in Paris for his small blimps. Many of them crashed, but eventually, “#6″ was the first airship to circle around the Eiffel Tower in 1901. Later that decade, it became a common occurrence to see Alberto fly to his favorite restaurant, tie the blimp to the roof, have supper and then leave again. Shortly thereafter, he constructed an “Omnibus” blimp to transport passengers throughout Paris.

For a time, Europe also believed Alberto Santos-Dumont to be the inventor of plane travel until it was proven that the Wright brothers beat him to that.

The German magazine “Der Spiegel” has a fascinating story about his adventures. And of course, there is a Wikipedia entry for him as well.

In his honor, the Brazilian government named the airport for domestic flights in Rio de Janeiro after him.

A beautiful monument just south of Burbank airport is the final resting place of some of aviation’s earliest heroes. 24 Aviation pioneers are laid to rest here.

They include:

W. Bertrum Kinner, who built the ‘Kinner’ airplanes that Amelia Earhart flew.

John B. Moisant, who won the Statue of Liberty Race in 1910 and was the first to carry a passenger across the English Channel.

Matilde J. Moisant, the second licensed female pilot in the United States in 1911.

Walter R. Brookins, flew for the Wright brothers.

Charles E. Taylor, a machinist for the Wright brothers who helped design and build the first engine for the Wright Flyer flown at Kitty Hawk. [we’re going to do a special “Aviation History” post on Charlie Taylor’s remarkable story soon]

The Portal of the Folded Wings is located in beautiful Valhalla Memorial Park and was originally built in 1924 (6 years before United Airport/Burbank was built).

On December 17, 1953 (the 50th anniversary of the Wright brother’s historic achievement) the Portal was dedicated as a “Shrine to Aviation” and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Docents are currently working on a 21′ long orbiter monument, to be placed in front of the Portal building. This new attraction will honor those who flew into space and particularly those who made the supreme sacrifice in that effort.

I wasn’t able to go this year… – but here’s a chance to live vicariously through the good folks at TopFlight.Tv.

First segment includes typical Reno Air Race scenes including the F-22 Raptor that make Sir Isaac Newton go “Hey – this isn’t possible!..”

The second covers a personal favorite: the F7F Tigercat. Enjoy!