Mechanical diversity
Aug. 17th, 2003 06:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jayOn our way home Friday, we left our hosts and visited an air museum and chocolate outlet...
The kids loved the Restful Nest (near Mariposa)... we had a suite with a separate bedroom, and they had trundle-twin beds and a sleeper sofa in the LR. Fireplace, bookcases, leather... it was comfy. The breakfast was huge, multi-course, and delightful. Aaahhh... mm. Afterward I waddled around packing while the kids swam in the pool (with a French rooster-icon done in tile on the bottom ;).
shows our genial hosts Lois and Jacques resting on the patio.
Leaving the Sierras behind, we stopped at the former Castle Air Force Base in the Central Valley (Atwater), home of an air museum. James was amused by the, um, inscriptions on some of the WWii-era aircraft:
Like the B-17 shown here (chuckle). There were lots of static displays, including a B-36 under which one could walk (and look up into the open bomb bay). Transports, fighters, trainers, tankers... lots of diversity. Mostly from the 1940s-70s, the golden years of aerospace.
In some ways, it reminds me of railroad museums... both showing technologies that flourished with many diverse approaches and companies, shrinking to commodity-level businesses with very slow rates of change and only a very few participants. Railroad museums display mostly 1840s-1920s technologies... aviation museums, 1920s-70s. The 1940s Beechcraft twin is recognizable as a predecessor of the KingAir that took me from Resolute to Cambridge Bay... just substitute turboprops, improve the instruments, and stretch it a bit.
And there are military artifacts in commercial life... note the double-lobed tail gunner's post on the end of this Boeing B-52:
Now contemplate the tail end of a Boeing 747 airliner. It too has the same double lobe... because the 747 was the losing design in the competition for what became the C-5 cargo transport. Had the 747 won instead, the military C-4 presumably would have had a tail gun option, like its B-52 cousin. Trivial, granted... kind of like noticing vestigal weapons-mounting hardpoints on street Humvees.
Anyway, I wandered around with the three boys, who were engrossed in all of these old planes. Pat was a good sport, especially given a headache.
After lunch, we took a wrong turn through Modesto but eventually made it to Oakdale, home of a Hershey chocolate factory and outlet store. Twenty minutes was enough... although I now have some exotic chocolate chips (cinnamon, raspberry) waiting for an appropriate recipe or potluck. And they still make "Zero" and "Zagnut" candy bars, which I hadn't seen since I was a teenager.
Arriving home around seven, we unpacked and... slept.
The kids loved the Restful Nest (near Mariposa)... we had a suite with a separate bedroom, and they had trundle-twin beds and a sleeper sofa in the LR. Fireplace, bookcases, leather... it was comfy. The breakfast was huge, multi-course, and delightful. Aaahhh... mm. Afterward I waddled around packing while the kids swam in the pool (with a French rooster-icon done in tile on the bottom ;).
shows our genial hosts Lois and Jacques resting on the patio.
Leaving the Sierras behind, we stopped at the former Castle Air Force Base in the Central Valley (Atwater), home of an air museum. James was amused by the, um, inscriptions on some of the WWii-era aircraft:
Like the B-17 shown here (chuckle). There were lots of static displays, including a B-36 under which one could walk (and look up into the open bomb bay). Transports, fighters, trainers, tankers... lots of diversity. Mostly from the 1940s-70s, the golden years of aerospace.
In some ways, it reminds me of railroad museums... both showing technologies that flourished with many diverse approaches and companies, shrinking to commodity-level businesses with very slow rates of change and only a very few participants. Railroad museums display mostly 1840s-1920s technologies... aviation museums, 1920s-70s. The 1940s Beechcraft twin is recognizable as a predecessor of the KingAir that took me from Resolute to Cambridge Bay... just substitute turboprops, improve the instruments, and stretch it a bit.
And there are military artifacts in commercial life... note the double-lobed tail gunner's post on the end of this Boeing B-52:
Now contemplate the tail end of a Boeing 747 airliner. It too has the same double lobe... because the 747 was the losing design in the competition for what became the C-5 cargo transport. Had the 747 won instead, the military C-4 presumably would have had a tail gun option, like its B-52 cousin. Trivial, granted... kind of like noticing vestigal weapons-mounting hardpoints on street Humvees.
Anyway, I wandered around with the three boys, who were engrossed in all of these old planes. Pat was a good sport, especially given a headache.
After lunch, we took a wrong turn through Modesto but eventually made it to Oakdale, home of a Hershey chocolate factory and outlet store. Twenty minutes was enough... although I now have some exotic chocolate chips (cinnamon, raspberry) waiting for an appropriate recipe or potluck. And they still make "Zero" and "Zagnut" candy bars, which I hadn't seen since I was a teenager.
Arriving home around seven, we unpacked and... slept.
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Date: 2003-08-18 08:39 am (UTC)