'Connie' spy plane leaves Camarillo Airport for new home →

Photo by Chuck Kirman from the Ventura County Star article.

Sorry to see her go.

xplanes:

Date: April 1926
Description: NORGE POLAR FLIGHT
Details:
The ‘Norge’ airship, hired from Italy by Amundsen, at the start of its flight over the North Pole. From Spitzbergen it made a 17-hour flight to Alaska.
Source: unnamed photographer
(via)

xplanes:

Keystone-Loening K-84 “Commuter”, circa 1930 (via)

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xplanes:

sunday fantasy #338 

reblog: etceterablog: Matthew Day Jackson
Axis Mundi, 2011
Repurposed cockpit of a B29 aircraft, aluminium, red oak, glass, steel, plastic, lead, bronze, iron, obsidian, leather, silver, stainless steel, concrete
373 x 480 x 590 cm / 146 7/8 x 189 x 232 1/4 in

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Zeppelins over Los Angeles again? Yep, according to this story. In 2014, Goodyear will replace its fleet of blimps with larger rigid-structure airships from the German Zeppelin company. Not quite as big as the USS Los Angeles above, but cool none the less.

From a Photographic History of Santa Monica Airport (12.3MB PDF) by Robert Trimborn (with the related narrative here). Aside from the soloar panels, this ought to look familiar to any McBreen.

Stumbled across WebTrak for Santa Monica Airport showing live flight tracking in the Los Angeles area.

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The beautiful Lockheed L-1649 Super Constellation. I recently discovered this photo gallery with great shots of a TWA Connie at the Airline History Museum. Looking at the interior gave me some design inspiration for my Airstream trailer (particularly this sink, bulkhead and ceiling, and bunk).

I love how one American icon inspires thoughts of another.

Howard Hughes Camarillo Airport Connection

Came across this little gem in the Wikipedia article about Oxnard Air Force Base, or what is today Camarillo Airport:

Oxnard Airport was opened in 1934 by the County of Ventura and consisted of a 3,500 foot dirt runway … During the thirties Howard Hughes erected a tent on the airport to shelter his H-1 racer, which he tested from the Oxnard Airport.

All the more interesting considering that I always suspected the scene in The Aviator when Hughes crashes the H-1 into a beet field was filmed in Oxnard. Locals may recognize some of the nearby features in these shots (ignoring the simulated bipack color Scorsese annoyed us with), better to just watched on the DVD at 46:35:

Which pretty confidently puts the shooting location about here. The real event took place near Santa Ana, CA captured in this National Geographic photo.

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Shot this beautiful Lockheed 18-56 Lodestar at a local airshow and assumed it to be a Learstar executive transport. Upon further investigation, apparently it started with the RAF in 1941 as an L-414 Hudson and was converted in 1955 to a Loadstar. It’s now owned by Ironworker Supply Inc., of Westlake Village, CA.