It was a great ride today. It was warm (Yeah!!), it was sunny, it was mostly flat, and I had a tailwind all day. What more could you ask for?? (Spoiler alert, check the last photo)
As I had over 70 miles to go today, I was rolling shortly after 8:30. Leaving the Columbus / Dublin area was remarkably easy, and I had only about 2 miles of heavy traffic, but everyone was well behaved and gave me plenty of space. After about 6 miles, I was out in the country, traffic dropped to almost nothing, and it was smooth sailing for the rest of the day.
The first town I rode though was Plain City, and true to its name, there was nothing ostentatious about it. It was, however, very neat and clean.
After lunch in Urbana, Jeanna went on to our motel for the night, while I stopped at Grimes Municipal Airport to visit its museums. There are 3 museums on the grounds, the Grimes Flying Lab Foundation, the Champaign Aviation Museum and the Northern Branch of the Mid America Flight Museum.
The first museum I visited was the Grimes Flying Lab. The museum, as well as the airport, is named after Warren G. Grimes, who founded Grimes Manufacturing Company.
The company was founded in the 1930's and produced aviation lighting. According to Wikipedia, "Grimes invented the familiar red, green and white navigation lights found on the wing tips and tails of aircraft and other electrical fixtures for aircraft including landing, instrument and interior lights."
This is a Beechcraft Model 18. Grimes used it to demonstrate his lighting products and contained over 75 types of aviation lighting. According to one of the volunteers, it "looks like an UFO" when all the lights are on.
Paul KriegThe "protruding" cheek gun mount at the front (the "primered" area forward of the two side windows) is the quick, visual, tell-tale [there was one on each side] of a Vega built B-17 (both F & G models). Vega was the only B-17 manufacturer who incorporated this feature in their airframes. Reply to this comment 10 months ago
Volunteers have been working Mondays through Fridays since 2006 to restore the plane. Here, Irv and Mike are working on a skin for the wing behind them. They volunteer every Tuesday and Thursday.
