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Adam aircraft returned with their inline piston-powered A500 and their twin-jet A700. You'll start seeing some of these in service soon.
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This behemoth is a Gippsland Aeronautics GA8, made in Australia.
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This Pitts Special has a nice yellow scheme.
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Keith Campbell's nice Model 12 was on display by the IAC tent.
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The sun sets on a beautiful day.
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This Cessna Bobcat (T-50) seems to be taking in the sunset as well as an airliner flies overhead. When the Cessna was built, who could have imagined that we would routinely fly hundreds of folks at a time halfway across the world, non-stop and near the speed of sound... at a price that many average citizens could afford?
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The Cessna O-2 Duck is often overlooked, but was a very important aircraft in Vietnam. It filled the gap between the O-1 and the arrival of the OV-10, and the Forward Air Controllers who flew them had one of the most dangerous and important jobs of all. When a FAC showed up, the Viet Cong and NVA knew to lay real low... those who didn't quickly found themselves in the midst of hell on earth as the FAC directed bombers, fighters, artillery, and naval big gunnery right onto their position.
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The typical loadout was mostly 2.75 inch unguided White Phosphorus ('Willie Pete') marking rockets, with a few high-explosive HE rounds or occasionally even the larger Zuni rockets in case a target of opportunity came up. Here you can also see a log flare, used to illuminate the battlefield at night.
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Precious Metal is a highly-modified P-51 with a Griffin engine up front. Hanging a Griffin, with its massive counter-rotating props, on the front of a P-51 isn't a new idea... famed racer and warbird pilot Steve Hinton successfully campaigned a similar racer named Red Baron in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Red Baron isn't with us any longer, but Precious Metal sure captures the spirit of it.
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You just don't see something like this every day.
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Fosters - Australian for... exhaust covers?
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True, the Mustang's original lines are classic... but even in highly-modified racer form, it's still a complete thoroughbred.
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There were a fair number of warbirds, and though no bombers appeared, the lineup of front-line fighters was exciting. POP QUIZ: Name these planes!
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The other end of the lineup.
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Answer 1: F4U Corsair. That was really easy.
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Plane number two: Supermarine Spitfire. RAF officers could often choose what letters to put on the side of their planes, and occasionally a bit of humor came out as seen here.
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Arguably the best fighter to just miss WW2 service, the Bearcat has awesome performance. It held a piston-engine time-to-climb record that stood for decades.
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This P-40 is from the Cavanaugh Flight Museum in Texas. A beautiful and rarely-seen aircraft!
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I'm told that this logo was "cleaned up" a bit from the original wartime version...
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A fighter just seems more "fighter-like" when it actually has a good old-fashioned manual gunsight, doesn't it?
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The nose of the P-40 is very distinctive.
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This O-1 is well-protected... and yes, it's in USMC colors. The O-1 had a long and distinguished history not only in every branch of the US military, but many foreign ones as well.
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This DC-3 was on display in original American Airlines colors. Beautiful!
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The warbird ramp is a runway, which is marked with a big flashing X to make sure that nobody tries to land on it (in case the dozens of large planes lining both sides isn't enough of a clue...)
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... I've always wondered what would happen if you painted a plane with glow-in-the-dark paint!
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Even at night, this Piper PA-22 in the Vintage parking area was very pretty!
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