Great variety of old advertising from QuestionableAdvice.tumblr.com (Centuries of Advertisements and Advice)

It's like Shorpy for advertisements! Very cool collection, enjoy more at http://questionableadvice.tumblr.com/

Shortest take off and landing contest in Valdez Alaska

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/05/bush-plane-competition-spurs-innovation/
has a good gallery of the planes and the innovations that are used to get off the ground faster, ans land slower

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/05/video-bush-pilot-competition-how-slow-can-you-go/ tells the story of Josh and how his 890 feet total take off and landing was only good enough for 3rd

and http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/05/video-young-pilot-prepares-for-stol-competitionvideo-young-pilot-prepares-for-stol-competition/#more-34809 is the story with photos and video of a 17 yr old that has built a custom Super Cub to win this contest

102 yr old Bleriot designed aircraft with a 100 yr old engine flys for the first time

 Experimmental Aviation Assoiciation enthuisiasts decided to undergo 1000's of hours to build an aircraft to the design specs planned out 102 years ago.

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/06/flying-a-102-year-old-design-for-the-first-time/#more-36045
and the source of their story: http://eaa.org/news/2011/2011-06-06_bleriot.asp which has the full uncondensed story

EAA’s project also commemorates the 100th anniversary of the first air mail flight by Earle Ovington’s famous Queen’s Bleriot, on September 23, 1911.

1909 Grand Palais Air Show in Paris

 I have had the top photo so long I don't know where it came from, the bottom two are from http://dieselpunk.livejournal.com/409946.html#cutid1

above image Robert Esnault Pelterie Monoplane at Exposition, 1909 from http://edwardianera.tumblr.com/

P51 Mustang field service reference manual... its astonishing what you can stumble across at the swap meet, selected interesting pages

 

 

I just watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, and wondered about that Nazi flying wing

The Nazi Flying Wing seen in the film was not a real plane.

 Raiders production designer Norman Reynolds designed the plane for the film, based on historical Northrop Corporation designs and drawings by Ron Cobb of the Horten Ho-2-29.

The fake plane was built by Vickers, and was painted in London at EMI Elstree Studios. In order to ship the unwieldy prop to Tunisia, it had to be disassembled and sent piecemeal before being reconstructed on location.
After the Flying Wing was destroyed in the film in 1981, the remains of the plane sat quietly in the Tunisian desert, where parts of it was salvaged by prop collectors.
http://indianajones.wikia.com/wiki/Flying_Wing

http://dieselpunk.livejournal.com/423162.html#cutid1

1920 Dayton-Wright RB-1

Dayton-Wright RB-1 was built in 1920, a racing aircraft developed in the United States to participate in the 1920 Gordon Bennett Cup air race. The aircraft was a high-wing monoplane with retractable landing gear undercarriage operated by a hand-crank making it one of the first instances of undercarriage retraction for aerodynamic benefit alone, clearly ahead of his time. With a monocoque fuselage and cantilever wing (built of solid balsa wood covered in plywood and linen) that incorporated a mechanism to vary its camber in flight. Unfortunately he was unable to fully participate in the race, getting off the highway due to technical problems. After that the aircraft was taken to the Henry Ford Museum.
from http://dieselpunk.livejournal.com/
The pilot had no forward visibility, but was provided with side windows. Cockpit access was through a hatch in the top of the fuselage.

Dismantled and shipped to France, the RB-1 was flown by Howard Rinehart in the September 28 race, but was forced to withdraw from the competition due to mechanical failure in flight. It was returned to the United States, where it is preserved at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayton-Wright_Racer

Just a gust of wind

This misfortunate pilot landed his vintage tri-plane on its nose. The man had been flying the famous Fokker Dreidecker aircraft at the Flying Legends airshow at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, Cambsridgeshire. But when he landed the WW1 fighter aircraft a sudden gust of wind blew it on its nose. No one was hurt in the incident. (Philip Tyler / Rex) http://news.yahoo.com/photos/snapshots-week-of-june-3-1307133161-slideshow/#crsl=

Ruth Law, first of many record setting barnstormer pilots, bought her first airplane from the Wright Brothers

photo from http://steampunkvehicles.tumblr.com/  info from http://earlyaviators.com/eoliver.htm and http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/law.html

Ruth Law Oliver, the first woman to loop the loop in an airplane, the first to make a night flight and the one- time holder of the Chicago to New York aerial speed record bought her first airplane in 1912 from Orville Wright when she was 21 years old.  "I purchased a Wright biplane because it seemed to me they had the greatest success"

in 1912 she went to work as a commercial pilot, flying passengers to and from the Sea Breeze Hotel, in Florida.

From that time she proceeded to pile up new records in flying and was the outstanding woman barnstormer of her era. She was so successful that, in 1917, she earned as much as $9,000 a week for exhibition flights.

In 1917, Miss Law was the first woman authorized to wear a military uniform at America's entry into World War I. She applied to the United States Army to fly combat missions, when she was turned down she wrote an article for Air Travel ("Let Women Fly!") that inspired many future women aviators. She was told that she could do a lot of good just by teaching others to fly. (Sexism is such bs)

She was sent to Europe - directly to the battle fronts in order to gain first hand knowledge of the actual fighting. She returned fired with enthusiasm, and enlisted in the U.S. Aviation Corps, as a recruiting officer. Her efforts were responsible for recruiting many of our fighter pilots.

While doing this important war work, Miss Law found time to break a few records on her own. In 1916 she set the world's altitude record of 11,200' at sheepshead Bay, N.Y. In the same year she flew 511 miles non-stop, from Chicago to Hornell, N.Y.. then on to New York City in 8 hr. 55 min. 25 sec. using a Curtis bi-plane.

She carried the first official air mail to the Philippine Islands in 1919

After the war, there came the Ruth Law Flying Circus, a three plane troupe that left crowds at state and county fairs astonished. She flew her old Curtiss plane, with Wright controls, and the two male pilots flew Jennys in close formation with her 25 feet above racing cars on county tracks.

Wilbert Robinson, manager of the Dodgers went down in baseball lore for his attempt to catch a ball dropped from an airplane. In 1908, Gabby Street had caught a ball dropped from the Washington Monument. Robbie scoffed that this was all that difficult a feat and so Ruth Law, a famous aviatrix, was enlisted to fly a plane higher than the Washington Monument and drop a ball for Robbie to catch.

 When Robinson, now 53 years old, caught the object he saw falling from the plane, he was splattered with warm juice from a grapefruit. The impact knocked him to the ground whereupon he exclaimed: "Help me, lads, I'm covered with my own blood."

Law explained that she had forgotten the baseball back in her hotel room and when she discovered the situation it was too late to retrieve the ball. So she took a grapefruit from the lunch of one of the ground crew and dropped it instead

Every now and then then landing gear won't operate when you need it most, like the South Pacific in 1945

But that day wasn't a bad one, USMC pilot Ken Pruitt ran it out of fuel, and then coasted onto an atoll airstrip nice a slow and safe. Each of the 5 crewmembers decided to ride it out rather than parachute down... and they all walked away. Read about it at http://www.lyonairmuseum.org/news/b-25-belly-landing-on-pacific-island/

taking the pretty girl for a ride, 1911. She is a airplane passenger pioneer

her name and the circumstances at http://www.shorpy.com/node/10200

notice they don't have seatbelts, but her dress is carefully tied around her legs so her ankles will remain demurely out of sight. The look on their faces is terrrific

More cool stuff from 5window.tumblr.com

all from http://5window.tumblr.com but beware that it's changed a bit from being primarily race cars and hot rods, there are lots of nude women, lingerie, etc etc. Yup, that's awesome, but don't let your boss sneak up on you to see what you are surfing the web looking at