Wishing a Final Farewell to the Yankee Lady

I found out yesterday that the Yankee Lady would be leaving for California at Noon today.  I figured that I would head over to Willow Run to see her off.  I will have more thoughts on that after the pictures.

I arrived a little early at the airport.  I wanted to make sure I had a decent spot and it turned out to be fairly decent.  I was able to catch this RV-8 as it was doing touch and goes at the airport.

The RV-8 is a homebuilt aircraft that can be used for stunt flying.  It was first introduced in 1995 and a little over 1600 have been built.

I think this particular one comes out of Monroe.

This is a 737 but I'm not sure who it belongs to.  I'm pretty sure it is used for hauling freight.

The RV-8 again.

This is a Piper Archer that belongs to flight school that operates out of Willow Run.  I think it is the school that now handles the Eastern Michigan flight program.

As I was looking at Flight Radar to see if the Yankee Lady had a flight plan, I saw that this plane would be taking off around the same time.

It is a 727 belonging to USA Jet.  It was heading down to Laredo, TX.  I presume it is delivering parts.

A Diamond DA-20.

The Piper Archer again.

The moment that I was waiting for, the Yankee Lady taking off from Willow Run for the last time.  It was a pretty nice day for it.

The Yankee Air Force bought her in 1985 for $250,000.  After some test hops, she was brought from Mesa, Arizona to Ypsilanti, MI.

When the museum got her to Ypsilanti, they found that they need to do alot of work to restore her to her condition in World War II.

It took nine years to do that and her first post-restoration flight took place in 1995.

She has been in a movie and took part in the dedication of the Memphis Belle at the US Air Force museum.

Last year, there was a directive from the FAA that kept her grounded.  The Yankee Air Museum had to some work on her wing spar to make her compliant.

They had to do some other work on her this year.

In June, they announced that she was sold to a person in California.

It was announced kind of clumsily and caused a bit of uproar.

So now she is on her way to California where she will be taken apart and shipped to New Zealand where she will be completely restored.  Her purchase price was 15 million.

As I said, they kind of fumbled the announcement of her sale.  Initially reading between the lines, it sounded like the museum could be in some financial trouble.  There were other people that explained it better.  Namely, that she was getting expensive to maintain and it would come down to saving her or doing other things.  They decided on other things.

To put it in perspective, I believe the cost of spar thing was close to a million dollars.  It costs close to 300,000 to replace her engines.  I'm not sure on costs of other parts but I imagine they are not cheap.  I would hate to see them keep her and then have to scrap her later because of lack of funding.  Of the planes in their collection, the B-17 was probably the most valuable.

So I hope she has a good home and may come around some time in the future.
 

Some of my Diecast Airplanes

 After taking pictures of the Chessie, I decided to get some pictures of some of die cast models.  Most of these are 1/400 scale.

The Concorde was supposed to be a game changer and might have been had the United States not banned sonic booms over the country.  Because of that, it was limited to coastal airports (and Detroit).  It couldn't carry enough passengers to be cheap but the service was great.  United is talking about bringing back supersonic aircraft.  Maybe they can make a go of it.

Pan Am was an airline that made the imagination wander.  Thier owner was forging new air routes and pushing new airplanes.  There were a couple of major airplanes that came at the advice of Pan Am.  I think one of them was the 747.  Opening up the international routes began the end for them.  Every so often, there is talk of an airline taking the Pan Am name.  They may take the name but they will never take the legend.

Northwest was another innovator in the aviation industry.  They pretty much opened up the Asian market to the airline industry.  They had direct flights to China and Japan from Detroit and Minneapolis.  They had one of the best service records of the airlines out there.  Unfortunately, the name disappeared when they merged with Delta.

A couple years ago, United had woman artists submit ideas for a special livery.  They called "Art Her Way".  This is one of the winners.  It looks pretty cool but since United doesn't fly the 757 my way, it will be difficult to see.

This is the livery dedicated to New York.

This is one of the classic United liveries.  I wish it was still around but I don't think it will come back.

And this is probably the classic United livery.

North Central is another fallen flag.  It disappeared when it was acquired by Republic.  Republic kept Herman the Duck but Republic disappeared after their merger with Northwest.

This is the Salmon Thirty Salmon.  It is used by Alaska Airlines as they are based in Seattle.  It is a cool looking livery but it rarely comes this way, so I'll have to be content with seeing it on a model.

I've actually seen this livery a couple of times.  Sadly, Southwest ended their relationship with Sea World and doesn't use this anymore.  They didn't like some of the negative publicity that Sea World was getting at the time.

While, I don't like the livery, I do like the plane.  It's not a bad livery but not quite as iconic as some of their older liveries.

This is a B-52 diecase model I found.  I got it because it was using the wing that was based on K.I. Sawyer.  They did this paint scheme for one of the commemorations of D-Day.

Catching a Tri-Jet

 Apparently I could have caught an An-124 if I could have gotten away from work on Monday but I couldn't, so I didn't.  I was thinking about heading over to Metro to see if I could get pictures of it on the ground.  I should have because I could have gotten pictures with its nose up.  Anyway, I was looking at FlightAware and I saw that a 727 was heading into Willow Run.  While that isn't particularly rare, it isn't particularly common either.  It was a nice night, so I headed over there.

while I was waiting for the main attraction, I noticed that planes that would be landing at Detroit Metro Airport were flying over.  I decided to get a picture of this Spirit Airlines A320.

This guy was doing touch and go landings.

It was a Piper Arrow.

And it was pretty cool to catch.

This Kalitta 737 was getting ready to take off it.  It had to watch for the Piper Arrow to return.

The Piper Arrow returned.

The light was just about perfect.

I kind of like catching beacon shots.

The almost straight out shot.

And the plane that I was waiting for.

It was a 727 coming in from Queretaro in Mexico.

It was a pretty loud plane.  I couldn't imagine living near an airport in the days when these were more common.

Modern planes are quiet.

One more shot.

I still had a little more light, so I decided to head over to get pictures of the B-52.

They moved her to a better spot and based on the signage, they are building an hangar over here.  I'm sure if its instead of the factory one.

Another angle of that plane.

I saw this plane.  Evidently, they are doing work on it as it doesn't have any engines.  I liked the picture with the sunset in the background.

I liked it so much that I took another.