Back on the Train-Washington to Oregon

We left Aunt Trudy's place by taxi, after having previously returned the rental car, and started our next-to-last train ride--this time to Oregon.

Tom Solan met us in Salem and we drove about a hour up to their home in McMinnville. Along the way I snapped a couple of shots of the scenery while we were speeding along. Here are some fields with Spring plants blooming away:
Very near their home is this very interesting Aircraft Museum which I was later able to visit on my own. It houses the famous "Spruce Goose" built by Howard Hughes and fabricated during WWII entirely out of wood. The building below was build specifically to house this monster airplane.
Here's a shot of the Solan home on a corner lot.
And Tom's work truck.
The day before we arrived Tom just finished a new patio deck roof and here's the fancy structure and fan:
Jerrible bearable, Tommer Bomber and Julie on the new patio:That evening Tom cranked up Jerri's birthday present to him, a BB-Q cooker. We had the first steaks we've eaten in ages. Go Tom--they were delicious!Shawny showed up just in time, and brought little Matias along too (see him below on the couch after he woke up from his nap).I had to have a copy of this framed photo of Tom and Matias totally zonked.
Just before we took off to continue our journey South I took a couple of hours to check out the nearby Air Museum. Here's the famous Spruce Goose. It's so large that there's no way to get the entire thing into one photo!Inside the thing is an astonishing array of unbelievable features. Since it was wartime when this craft was being built, Hughes was prohibited from using steel or rubber or aluminum due to the wartime rationing, so he made everything out of Birch! (Actually, this was apparently more flexible and lighter for such a project, so the only Spruce used was for the points where the wings attach to the fuselage.

There are an amazing number of innovations which Hughes came up with, some of which are still being incorporated in modern aircraft. One such is a complete system of fire control. The extinguishers, shown in the tail view below, are connected to all 6 engines and to virtually every part of the airplane and are controlled by valves, hoses and pipes and distributed to all critical areas.The picture below is of a nearby model showing the structure of the fuselage and application of the Birch siding.Here's another model of the complete design. For those of you who saw the movie, "Aviator", which is about Hughes' life, we saw this plane in flight (taken from actual movies from the time). I learned, however, at this show that after he made the initial taxi maneuvers with the reporters on board, he returned to the dock, dropped them off and picked up his full flight crew. They were supposed to only do some more taxiing tests, but at the last minute, as they approached the 90 mph taxi speed, Hughes instructed his hydraulics specialist (a full system of hydraulics was invented to move the rudder, ailerons and wing flaps on this plane) to drop the flaps and prepare for takeoff! To the astonishment of the spectators and film crews in nearby boats the plane took to the air and maintained a level of flight for about 1/2 mile and 25 feet off the water. When asked by reporters afterwards about the purpose of this surprise, Hughes just commented that he likes to do the unexpected.There were many other aircraft exhibited at this show. I'm including some shots below.This is the wonderfully crafted wood structure used on early planes. Check out the spring-loaded shocks on the landing gear in the next picture! This aluminum-sheeted plane was built for the Ford company and is called the Ford Tri-Motor. I got a real kick out of the beautiful wood-lined interior.This is a model, built in modern times, of Leonardo DaVinci's mechanical bird. The wings actually flap with a twisting motion like he observed real birds doing! The two ropes, connected to rings are for pulling the wings up and down.And, to my great gusto, they had a display of the operation of the crankshaft and connecting rods for a radial engine. I was always puzzled by this and dying to find out how they accomplished seven to nine pistons all running in a circle. The rods are connected to a ring which is attached to the crank-shaft lobe, with a counter-balance to offset the thrust.