Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (and Tanks and Rockets)

Although this trip barely involved an airplane, it was aerospace related so it just barely qualifies as blog-worthy.  Brenda had taken Owen to Fort Wayne for the weekend in a strategy designed to give each of our twin boys some alone time with a parent.   Since Elliot is a big fan of Buzz Lightyear, Star Wars and other space related toys, I decided to take him to a children’s planetarium show at the Cernan Space Center at Triton College.  However, the museum doesn’t open until 1:30pm on Sundays so we had to find a way to spend the morning.  The previous weekend, I had taken Owen up in the Cessna to see his school from the air and meet Cactus the airport cat at Cushing Field, so I felt I owed Elliot a trip, too.  Unfortunately, it was a bit bumpy so our flight lasted a scant ten minutes. Still, we had a great breakfast at the airport restaurant and Elliot thought the airplane fueling process was absolutely riveting.

Elliot in the right seat of 5492B

On the way home from Clow airport we had to wait at the railroad crossing through downtown Wheaton.  When the train finally crossed in front of us, it had three ore cars being pushed by an engine, and a caboose in front.  Although trains go by our house all the time seeing a caboose is quite a rarity.  Elliot actually managed to get a picture as we paralleled the train on College Avenue and I tried match speeds.  I was impressed, since my picture didn’t even get the caboose in frame.

Elliot's photo of  a caboose - a rare sight these days

After killing some time at home, we left for the museum. On the way down North Avenue we passed a tank that was ignominiously being used to advertise non-alcoholic beer.  It appeared to be an M-46 or M-47 Patton based on the small roller between the drive sprocket and the rearmost road-wheel.  Shortly thereafter, we arrived at the Cernan Space Center.

Gen. Patton would be rolling over in his grave if he knew his namesake tank was advertising non-alcoholic beer

The Cernan Science Center, named after the astronaut Gene Cernan who flew in the Gemini program as well as Apollo 10 and 17 and grew up in the area, is located on 5^th avenue just north of North Avenue.  Although the space center is part of Triton College, it is easy to spot by the outside exhibits.  The center’s outside display consists of a small rocket and a mock-up of an Apollo capsule use to train helicopter pilots for recovery missions.

Elliot in front of the capsule used for recovery training

 The inside of the science center has a few exhibits, the most impressive of which is an Apollo 10 spacesuit. There is also a display case with a variety of fossils, but not much else.  Almost out of sight above eye level, is a narrow yet wide poster of showing dinosaurs from various eras.   While the small version was unimpressive, it was exciting for us to see because we had been seen the sprawling, imagination firing,  original which graces the Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven, CT.  If you are planning to visit the center, I wouldn’t count on spending much time seeing the displays.   There is, however, a pretty well stocked gift shop with a good selection of science related gifts.  It also happens to be a great place to pick up some freeze-dried ice cream to eat before the planetarium show if you have to keep a five year occupied.

An Apollo X space suit

The planetarium show, a story about the moon, was not exactly riveting even for the target audience.  Although the show was written for children in 1^st grade, I could tell Elliot was not the only kid who had mentally checked out of this activity.  To his credit, he did sit through the entire presentation and make it to the laser show, a cartoon projected on the planetarium dome telling the story of Perseus and Andromeda.  Despite my lackluster impression of this particular set of presentations, I have not written off the Cernan Space Center at all.  The Zeiss projector beamed a great view of the constellations on the domed ceiling, which unfortunately happened to be completely irrelevant to that day’s presentation.  In fact, I pretty much ignored the presentation about the moon and just zoned out and relaxed as I watched the Pleiades, Taurus, Orion, Leo, and Pegasus wheel overhead.  I will definitely be bringing the boys back, since the Cernan Space Center is much more convenient alternative to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.

Searching for a WWII POW Camp

Finding Camp Ellis

Nov 6^th, 2010

Always on the lookout for someplace interesting to fly, I came across the website for museum located at Logan County Airport, in Lincoln, IL.  The website stated that the museum is housed in a building from Camp Ellis, which a Google search revealed housed thousands of German and Austrian POWs during the Second World War. However, if you assumed, as I did, that the airport is on the former Camp Ellis, you'd be wrong.   While trying to match up the location of Camp Ellis with Logan County Airport it quickly became apparent that something was amiss.  It turns out Camp Ellis was nowhere near Lincoln, IL; it was situated 60 miles to the North West near Ipava, IL.   When the army closed down Camp Ellis in 1950 the buildings were up for grabs to anyone who could truck them away.  Consequently, buildings from Camp Ellis are scattered around Illinois, while almost nothing remains at the original location.  Fortunately, however, others have researched Camp Ellis, and one individual serendipitously posted the GPS coordinates and a photo of the only surviving building from the original camp.  GPS coordinates you say?  Time for road trip.

 

Logan Country Airport is located just south of Bloomington, IL which is shortly over hour for Clow Airport.   Without at GPS, it would be easy to get there using the Joliet, Pontiac, and Bloomington VORs, but on this trip I was using my Garmin 196 handled GSP and relying on the VORs and sectional chart for backup.  The danger of my GPS failing is all too real, with my batteries often finding their way into Buzz Light-year toys these days.  I also found that the GPS antenna did not like to stick to the Plexiglas in the near-freezing air at altitude, and kept falling off.  In the event, my flight to Logan County was uneventful and relaxing.

Heading to Logan County, a tractor kicking up dust

Logan County airport is a place where you get the feeling that not much has changed since F.D.R. was president.  Airplanes find shelter under Quonset huts, which at night are illuminated by a large, antiquated beacon which Charles Lindbergh would have recognized.  The fact that the museum is in a WWII era building is of little directional value, as just about every structure on the field seems to date from that era.   However, several people were ambling around, and they were able to point me toward the museum building. 

The museum, housed in a former Camp Ellis building.

If it could be said that one man’s museum is another man’s junkyard, it could also be said that the “Heritage in Flight” museum has a pretty nice junkyard.  All of the artifacts are from local donors. The museum building is divided into several rooms, each with a different theme. There are some modern items from operation Iraqi Freedom, but most of the museum space is devoted to the Second World War. There is, however, a room devoted to memorabilia from WWI, the largest of which is a large scimitar shaped aircraft propeller which was found under a local porch.  The museum also has many plastic models donated at various times, often by the widows of those who had built them.   In addition to the museum building, the adjacent hangar also has a large assortment of military items in glass display cases.  

Local papers announcing the End of WWII in Europe

The museum has a surprsingly broad collection of items.

After checking out the exhibits, I topped off the gas tanks and departed runway 21 to go look for the remains of Camp Ellis.  I had entered the GPS coordinates which I had found on the Internet as a waypoint, so getting there was a simple matter of following the GPS.  Right on schedule, the building whose picture I had seen online came into view.  

departing Logan County Airport

The only building remaining from Camp Ellis, which housed 5,000 POWs

I circled the building, took a few pictures, and headed North East back toward Clow Airport. Total flight time for the trip was 2.9 hours.

Ronald Reagan's Boyhood Home - Dixon, Illinois

Cold War and Cold Beer

On August 1st (my birthday) I was fortunate to have a short excursion which combined flying with my interest in history. Ronald Reagan’s boyhood home is located in Dixon, IL just a few miles from the Dixon-Walgreen airport, and it has been on my “places to go” list, since I learned about it – well that and watching “Hot Tub Time Machine” made me nostalgic for the 1980’s. To get the most out of the experience, I reviewed my cold war history by watching “Spies Like Us” and playing several games of “Missile Command.” On this trip, I was also fortunate to have a friend along for the ride, Adam, a fellow newly minted teacher and stay-at-home father.

The weather on Sunday was slightly scuddy. There was widespread fog and an advisory for IFR conditions, but since the museum didn’t open until 1:00pm, we were under no pressure to make an early departure. By noon the ceilings were up to 2800 ft., and visibility was 10 miles or better. I had filed an IFR flight plan, but given the improving weather there was no need to activate it. The flight out there was enjoyable, and since the cloud tops were only at around 3,500 ft. we got on top just for fun.

climbing up over the clouds on the way to Dixon, IL

The landing at Dixon was uneventful and we were able to get a taxi (City Cab) within a few minutes. The airport does have a courtesy car, but it is available only on weekdays. It worked out for the best, since our cab driver was able to swing us down by the newly renovated waterfront where a large statue of Reagan, seated on a horse, has been built. Ironically, the statue is facing the Democratic Party office, so it looks like the former president is about charge off through his opponent’s headquarters. After taking a few photos, we hopped back in the cab which took us to the Ronald Reagan house.

The main hangar at Dixon, a WPA building from the 1930's

The new statue of Reagan - across the street from the Democratic party office

The house adjacent to Ronald Reagan’s boyhood home has been converted into a visitor center which features a gift shop and a small theater. The museum charges a nominal fee which includes a guided tour and a short film. Prior to touring the main attraction, visitors view a short, eight minute film, about the former president. The film talks briefly about Dixon Illinois, provides a history of the Reagan family, and discuses the renovation of the house prior to Ronald Reagan’s visit during his presidency.

the visitor center adjacent to Reagan's boyhood home

Ronald Reagan's boyhood home

After the film, the visitors are walked next door by a guide, where they enter Reagan’s former residence through the front door and proceed upstairs. The house was originally built in the 1890’s so it small by modern standards – though it is palatial in comparison to Herbert Hoover’s boyhood home, which I visited last year. The upstairs consisted of a guest room/sewing room, a bedroom for the two Reagan boys, who shared a bed, and a small bathroom.

Ron and Neil's bedroom - probably a lot tidier now

After seeing the upstairs rooms, the tour move downstairs to see salon, dining room and kitchen. Most of the furnishing are from the period, but not original to the house. When the Reagan family moved from Illinois to California, many items were sold and other put into storage where they were subsequently destroyed by a fire. The recollections of Ronald, and his brother Neil, were used to return the house as closely as possible to its condition during the 1920s.

One surprising aspect of the tour was ironically how little one learns about Ronald Reagan from it. The tour of the house is really only just that – a tour of the house. The experience does not educate the visitor about Reagan’s political career or presidency at all. It neither promotes him as visionary who won the cold war, but neither does it mention any of the negative aspects of his presidency such as the tripling of the national debt, or the Iran Contra Affair. In that sense, it is at least impartial. Though the tour did not provide much of an education on Reagan, our tour guide (a retired teacher) was very knowledge. After our tour had concluded, we stayed around to ask additional questions, and then called city cab for a ride back to the airport.

the flight back in clearer skies

Adam

Our return flight was smooth. Having just completed something “culturally worthwhile” the obvious next course of action was to balance that out by the consuming some of the many fine beers in the Binny’s gift basket my brother had sent my for my birthday, proving that there is not better complement to the study of the cold war, than the study of cold beer.

Cahokia Mounds - East St. Louis, Illinois

Visiting Cahokia on an Indian Summer Day

(11//9/2009)

A trip to Cahokia Mounds had been rattling around in my brain since I first learned about the site in a U.S. history class I took a few years ago. The textbook described the Mississippian Culture and the city of earth mounds built by that culture, which had died out several hundred years before Spanish explorers such as DeSoto arrived. Having never heard of it before, I was surprised to learn it was in Illinois.

An odd cloud on the way to the Pontiac VOR

On this sojourn I was fortunate to have my friend Scott along for the ride. I met Scott through my teaching classes at National Louis University, and in addition to be an ardent road-tripper, he is also an excellent photographer. After postponing a short time in order to wait for ground fog to lift, we headed for Downtown St. Louis Airport (KCPS), via the JOT, PNT, BMI, and TOY VORs. Unfortunately we had a stiff headwind, so we stopped off at Bloomington for fuel at Image Air. We landed on runway 20 behind a Boeing 717, which made for some excitement. While there, we got a peek at their Frasca simulator with the 170 degree wrap around display.

After topping off, we headed south west to the TOY vor, then to Downtown St. Louis. On the way we passed lake Sangchris, which I’m sure many of the ultralight fliers in the club are familiar with. While the flight into St. Louis should have afforded an excellent view of the city, the Mississippi was very hazy, and we didn’t get the expected vista. We landed straight in on runway 23 and taxied over to Ideal Aviation, where they were kind enough to call Jenkin’s Cab for us. Our driver was Mr. Jenkins.

The busy ramp at Downtown St. Louis Airport

The cab ride to Cahokia State Park was about 15 minutes. A highway bisects the state park, with the visitor’s center on one side, and the enormous Monk’s mound on the other. We had Mr. Jenkins drop us off at the visitor’s center.

Outside the modern visitor center at Cahokia Mounds

The visitor’s center is a very impressive operation, featuring a movie theater and large displays of Indian artifacts. Although Cahokia’s website intimates that the center has a cafeteria, all we found were some restaurant booths and a few vending machines. Having passed up the airport restaurant on the assumption there was food at the museum this was a bummer. But, after settling for some cookies and Cheese-Its of indeterminate age, we walked through the exhibits and viewed the orientation film, then walked around the mounds.

While the Cahokia site contained 120 mounds of which 80 are still standing, the largest and most impressive one is Monk’s mound. It’s the largest earth structure in the America’s and the largest archeological site north of Mexico. The mound is impressive one its own: The structure is one hundred feet tall, and the base is roughly the size of the great pyramid of Giza. However, the fact that it was built solely with dirt carried in wicker baskets makes it even more so.

Side view of Monk's mound, one of many at the complex

A great view of downtown St. Louis from the top of Monk's Mound

another view of Monk's Mound

After seeing Monk’s Mound firsthand and enjoying the view of the St. Louis Arch from its summit we called Mr. Jenkins for a ride back to the airport. After paying the gas bill and checking weather we departed on runway 23R. The winds aloft, which had killed us on the way there now gave us a big boost. The GPS showed we were clocking 132kts ground speed! Due to the recent time change, about half of the return flight was at night.

passing Lake Sangchris on the way home

Following a smooth landing at Clow, we headed to Chipotle for beer and a burrito. Having just done over four hours of flying, I was a bit spent.

Herbert Hoover's House - West Branch, Iowa

An Almost Trip Out West
(7/3/2009)

     For the second year in a row, I planned a flight west to check out the sights in Iowa and Kansas. For the second year in a row, it got scrubbed. The original plan was to fly to Iowa City IA, Council Bluffs IA, Abilene KS, Atchison KS, then back to 1C5. In the end, I flew a totally different itinerary, but still had a fun trip.  I had been watching the weather for several days, so when flight services told me most of my trip was a no-go, I wasn’t surprised. Still I decided to set out, get as far as I safely could, then get an updated picture of the situation.

     The first leg of the flight was from 1C5 to Iowa City via the Davenport VOR. For this trip I wisely invested in the external antenna cable for my Garmin-196, so I had the GPS working as well. The ceiling was about 4,000 ft., but visibility was great and winds were light.  One of the runways at the airport was closed, so I was glad I had checked NOTAMs before going.

Crossing the Mississippi westbound

Iowa City Airport

   While I was checking the weather, and realizing that I would definitely not being completing the original itinerary, the man working the front desk asked if I wanted to use the crew van to run into town. I asked if it would be ok to drive to West Branch (10 miles away) to see the Herbert Hoover museum. He said that’d be fine, so I borrowed the van and set off for West Branch.
   
     The Herbert Hoover Museum was much nicer than I thought it would be. It is not a museum so much as a complex. The cottage where he was born is there as well as the original one-room school, and Quaker meeting house. There was also a reconstructed blacksmith shop like the one owned by Hoover’s father. Beyond the collection of period buildings is the Hoover Library, which featured many exhibits about his life. After checking out the place, I drove the van back to Iowa City.

Driving the Crew Van to West Branch

Herbert Hoover's Birthplace and Boyhood Home

   There was a big line of storms to the west, and I was debating staying put and waiting them out in the aviation themed hotel next to the airport. Instead, I opted for a change of plan. Brenda and the kids were in Fort Wayne, IN for the long weekend, so I decided I’d join them. Not wanting to retrace the route I'd just flown, I flew to Marshall County (C75), simply because I’d never been there before, then to Rantoul to visit the Octave Chanute Museum. It was about 45 minutes from Iowa City to Marshall County, then another hour to Rantoul.

A coal barge on the Mississippi

Approaching Rantoul, IL

     Rantoul Airport was strange because two of the four runways are closed as are most of the taxiways. The museum was a mixed bag. The planes in the indoor hangar were in great shape and there were some interesting planes you don’t see very often, but the ones outside were obviously neglected. The inside of the museum was dark and dank, a lot like…well…a closed military base.

Outside the Octave Chanute Museum

Inside the Octave Chanute Museum

   After topping off the tanks, I plotted a course to Fort Wayne, and called for (yet another) briefing. The route was via GPS until in range of the Wolf Lake VOR, then to Smith Field (SMD). With the help of a tailwind and some leaning, the GPS showed a ground speed of 112kts.

Good-bye Rantoul, IL

A windmill farm on the way to Fort Wayne, OH

    After spending the 4th of July in Fort Wayne with the family, it was time to head home. That morning there was an Airmet for IFR conditions. Cielings and visibility were low, but improving. After waiting a while for the weather to improve, I filed an IFR flight plan and got a lift to the airport. My clearance was via radar vectors to Victor-38, Victor-38 to the Peotone-VOR, then to the Joliet-VOR, and finally Clow. My assigned altitude was 4,000 ft. After slogging around in the clouds for a while, I could see that 6,000 was going to be a much smoother ride since the tops were somewhere below that. I asked ATC for, and received 6,000 ft. for my cruising altitude. This put me on top in smooth air. While cruising along Victor-38, I checked in with flight watch on 122.0 and confirmed Clow was VFR.

Breaking out at 6,000ft.

Does this get any cooler?

   Eventually near the Peotone VOR I was cleared to descend to 3,000, which was at the base of the clouds, and told to expect a visual approach. Since I could easily drop out of the clouds now into VFR, I cancelled my clearance, descended, and flew home VFR at 2,000.

   Landing back at Clow, I saw two wiener dogs being unloaded from a Cessna 182; apparently mine aren't the only ones! Total flight time had been aout 6.5 hours and the route have covered about 650 nautical miles.  Not a bad way to spend a weekend.

The Air Zoo - Kalamazoo, Michigan

On the last weekend in February, Brenda, the boys, and I took a road trip to Kalamazoo to visit, Brenda's aunt and uncle. Brenda's uncle Ken is a WWII vet who served in the artillery in Germany and has a strong interest in the war. Since he knew I was an airplane nut, he offered to take me and my father-in-law to the new air Kalamazoo Air Museum, the Air Zoo.

I've been to many air museums and enjoyed them all, but this particular weekend, I was in for a real treat, because it was "Open Cockpit Weekend". Although I'd never heard of a museum doing this before, you could actually climb into the cockpits of the WWII fighters! While I'm sure Brenda's dad and uncle would have been happier actually looking at the inside the museum, they graciously indulged me as I stood in line to hoist myself into the classic warplanes.

The first plane I was able to get in a was an HA-112, which was an ME-109 built under license in Spain. The difference between the Spanish and German planes, is the engine. While the German built planes were powered by a DB-601 inverted V-12, the Spanish ones were ironically powered by the British Merlin. The larger engine gives the Spanish planes a larger, less streamlined looking nose (For a comparison, the recent movie Valkyrie showed one of each flying side by side). Still, you wouldn't notice any of this from the inside except that everything was labeled in Spanish. The cockpit itself was very tight, almost cramped. It would have been even more so with a flying suit and parachute on. There also wasn't much clearance between the top of my head and the heavy, 150 pound, armored glass canopy.

waving from inside an HA-112 (a license built ME-109)

     The P-47 was a whole different story. It was, by contrast, enormous, and the cockpit was extremely roomy. The panel was very well layed out, but it was hard to tell if it had been originally built that way. It was obvious that there had been some upgrades, since P47s weren't built with an HSI.

inside the P-47 Thunderbolt

The plane I liked the best was the Bell P-39 Airacobra. Although the P-39 is atypical, having a car-style door instead of a sliding canopy, it was still not easy to get in and out. The other thing I noticed was that the canopy created a lot of blind spots. Unlike the P-47, which had a large bubble canopy, the P-39 canopy consisted of many smaller pieces of glass held together by a metal framework. Still, there was something "right" about that plane that I really liked.

The Bell P-39 - I could get used to this

The museum also boasted what is called a 4-D theater. The theater played a 3-D IMAX movie about a B-17 raid on Germany. Although the dialog in the movie was a little hoakey at times, the presentation was impressive from a technological standpoint. A touch that I thought was really clever was that the theater was styled as a WWII Quonset hut.  The museum is also kid friendly, and has numerous rides and simulators to keep the little guys entertained.

what a handsome bunch of guys: Brenda's uncle Ken, her dad, and I

If anyone is interested in getting a look into the planes, "Open Cockpit Weekends" in February may be an annual occurrence. If not, I certainly hit the jackpot. For pilots equipped to enter class C airspace, the museum is adjacent to the Kalamazoo airport.

Finding a "Lost" World War Two Factory in Chicago

Finding a "Lost" World War Two Factory in Chicago

 I have a fascination (my wife would say obsession) with the A-2 flight jacket. That, of course, is the instantly recognizable leather pilot jacket from the World War Two era. When my old A-2 made by Neil Cooper (now out of business) started to wear out, I started comparison shopping for a replacement. Many companies make A-2 jackets, but there are only a handful of companies that actually make authentic facsimiles of the original. In reading web pages about A-2 jacket manufacturers I learned that there were about 20 companies that made them during WWII and each company had a slightly different style. Some expensive reproduction makers even go so far as to reproduce the styles of the individual manufacturers. One frequently reproduced pattern is that of J. A. Dubow, which according to the inside label was located in Chicago.

   Out of curiosity, I decided to see if I could find the actual factory. In searching online, I found an article saying that J. A. Dubow had been a sporting goods manufacturer that had gone out of business when companies moved manufacturing overseas between 1950 and 1970. Not a promising start. Then I did a search on Ebay for J. A. Dubow. Someone was selling a vintage J. A. Dubow poster, and at the bottom the address was listed. It was on N. Milwaukee just South East of the intersection with Western avenue on the North side of the street. Off I went, digital camera in hand, to check it out.

   Here’s what the old J. A. Dubow factory looks like today.    As you can see, it’s been turned into condos. The water tower is gone, but the frame is still there sporting cell phone antennae. No doubt the residents of the building are oblivious to fact that they live where a classic piece of Americana was produced.

the former J. A. Dubow Factory in Chicago at Western and Milwaukee