The wife and I went to Fantasy of Flight yesterday.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_of_Flight

Amazing that this whole deal is privately owned. I could only dream.












A very good feature at this museum was that the owner included some interesting points that are not normally discussed. In his Kermits Comments are small tidbits such as :



























Was thinking of Darts Nieuport 11 build and how he was working through his landing gear layout so I got a couple pictures of other solutions.



And another method.







i have about 15 more photos that I will do in a second post. It proceeds on to the between the wars era then WW2.

Great pictures OG!

I wanted to visit there during our last trip to Pompano Beach, but ran out of time.
Will definitely be on the agenda next time.

Love it, sure wish there were more like it near bye. Closest is 75 miles.

Always notice them old radials sure leak oil. We went by an old P-47E when
the wife and I were first dating and it was just dripping away. Then they
pulled out between the hangers to test fire it up. OMG, talk about loud.
We had to retreat fast or loose hearing.

Thanks for sharing it!

Man, that is just drool worthy stuff.

i thought Kermit had closed it to the public??

And yes, the whole place is owend by Kermit Weeks, he has a great youtube channel thats worth checking out as well

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOC84qwgDHkUPwfeLKL40tQ

Those between the wars racing kites had some style didn't they?
If you could fly just one of the planes there just once, which would it be?

I thought that this museum was closed to the public, now, too. I live just outside of Orlando, not too far away. Was going to head over there but it was closed. From what I gathered it only opened up on special occasions. Was this one of those?

No; they were closed for a while, but are open again. Here is their site.


https://www.fantasyofflight.com/collection/

Here is some more.


























I found myself very interested in examining the folding wings and retractable gear on the Wildcat.







One of the curators must have noticed my interest and came over and explained what the lines were. He has ground crewed that aircraft many times. Showed me something that I had no idea of. When the wings are folded back down in carrier operations they are not immediately locked in case things change. So there is this system with a red tab that protrudes through the top surface where the pilot and ground crew can see it.



When the crank is turned to lock the wing, it retracts the red tab.


I also didn't know this about the Wildcats flap system.





Pretty big operation with a two runway layout and several hangars full of planes. They said they rotate them between the regular hangars and the museum hangar so that it stays interesting. You can see a Catalina in the center of this picture.




I am going back to do this. It will give me great pleasure to have the Stearman in my logbook.

Love the B-25's.

I have a 72" wingspan flyable R/C B-25 in my garage rafters.

Tempting, wish the batteries in my Controller weren't dead.....

Twin 46cc engines pull it right off the deck, about 20 feet.
Great flyer, but hard to see, it's aluminum color.....

Would have loved to see the real one, up close like that.

Great pics, thanks! Amazing collection indeed.

I met Kermit Weeks many years ago. (Early nineties). His old museum used to be at Tamiami airport in Kendall, a suburb of Miami. I kept my old Ercoupe there. One day I was coming in to land and the tower had him landing to the right of me, on the grass in his Jenny.
Another time I was getting checked out in a J3 Cub at a little grass runway airport called Richards Field. Myself and the owner were standing by the Cub and talking over the flight when a little airbatic plane came over and was being thrown all over the sky right over our heads. It came in to land. An Extra 300. It taxied over to us and stopped. The canopy was thrown open and it was Weeks. Beard and all. I think the plane belonged to Peggy Flagstaff who he had been dating at the time. (Still is,

maybe. I don't know).
The museum he had there was destroyed by Hurricane Andrew. And I mean DESTROYED. Sad sight. He managed to get the flyables out, but many rare airplanes were just piles of junk. The storm picked up a B17 that was parked outside and hurled it across two runways and into the woods on the far side of the field. It was unbelievable.
Sorry about the two posts. I accidently hit the send button while I was typing.

I was part of the US military relief effort for Hurricane Andrews. Saw that B-17. Sad.

What a coincidence !

I got the chance to fly down to Vero Beach today. My buddy was flying the chief of the maintenance section of our FBO down there to pick-up a plane that they were going to bring back for repair. So I got the chance to tag along in a Bonanza A36. So I would get some time in another airplane and do some work on a complex and high performance airplane to get my certification for free.

On the return flight we flew over Fantasy of Flight. You can see the turf runways and the Constellation outside.

Old, I used to see you guys heading south for Homestead, every day, when I was heading north to Miami airport to work. Trucks, Humvees, Helicopters. It was like a war zone.
When I was at Fantasy of Flight many years ago, there was a Martin B-26 Marauder parked outside. Only one in the world flying. Was that still there?
Well, now that I know it's opened again, I'm gonna have to head over there.

Not too long ago, Fantasy of Flight had a really good setup after it moved from Miami to Kermit's self created "Orlampa" halfway between Orlando and Tampa. I was an annual passholder for a few years when my son was little... until Fantasy of Flight shut down to save money for bigger plans. Now, only the one hangar is opened up seasonally on weekends. But the original setup with the main building having a nice restaurant, a gift shop, and a really great presentation of a B-17 in the early morning hours at a British airfield was something to experience. Now, you only get to see a small pool of the aircraft he has at the one open hangar.

Kermit's dream is to somehow turn it into a full-scale theme park that draws big crowds and gives him the money he needs to restore many more planes he has had crated up for years for lack of space and money. On Facebook, he claims that his next big expansion is near... but he has been claiming that ever since I heard him speak in the late 90s. I hope he succeeds. I love the place as it was, especially in the late 90s/early 2000s complete with hydraulically driven F4U simpits that allowed you to participate in a multiplayer dogfight against AI Zeroes with full motion.

In later years, the F4U simpits were immobilized and ran some version of MSFS, until they were eventually removed entirely. But my parents enjoyed the other interactive sims that were still there: a hang glider and a hot air ballon. Lots of fun.

My son grew up going there at least once or twice a year and learned to name all the planes. We haven't been since they shut down and scaled back to just the one hangar. I miss going there.

Pooch, the B-26 is in the other hangars and currently not on display. Only about a third of what's there is in the display hangar. They do change what is in the display hangar and if you visit their website it lists what is currently on display.

About Hurricane Andrew; man did it tear up lower Dade county. We fought in Panama City with Sheridan tanks, direct fire artillery, and SPECTRE gunship and it didn't look half as bad as the southern half of Miami. Our Rifle Companies who were given areas to work had trouble knowing where they were because all the street signs were down and the debris was so bad that streets themselves were hard to distinguish. I mean that there were places were there were several blocks that were nothing but a debris field. Just the ground covered in debris. At first it was so bad that we had to have a Navy replenishment ship, USS Yosemite, using helicopter supply since the airports and roads were unusable. What area were you in and did you ride out Andrew ? I was positioned at Miami airport as part of the 18th Airborne Corp staff.

Yes, I had a house in Kendall. 30,000 dollars worth of damage. The neighborhood was a wreck. It took the second floor of the house down the block clean off. We could hear things hitting the house and I was sure something was coming through a wall any minute. I didn't have a tree or a bush standing. Completely cleaned my yard off and sandblasted my house. There was hardly any paint on it! The storm was incredible.

Weeks YouTube channel will keep you busy for hours, especially the "Kermie Cam" videos:


https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOC84qwgDHkUPwfeLKL40tQ

That's a great link.

I am greatly envious of his collection and flying experiences.

As am I. Were I to ever win the lottery I'd try my best to take his "largest private air force" title.

Great pics OG and Kermit has several great aircraft.

Back to the Wildcat, Did you know that you have to hand crank the landing gear to get it to retract and extend? Seems like it takes around fifty rotations of the hand crank to raise the gear. Same with the Grumman Duck. Now image having to raise and lower the gear that way during carrier operations.


Wheels

i think it took 42 turns to raise the gear ... as for lowering .. there was a neat little trick they used, they set the crank to "down" so it went the right way, made sure their leg/hand wasnt ANYWHERE near it ... then pulled a sudden high-g turn ... voila! lowered landing gear .. not officaly sanctioned mind

Yes, I remember reading that you could always tell a new Wildcat pilot. The plane would be going up and down after take off as he cranked the gear up.

If you watch Kermit's video with the Grumman Duck you can see him crank the gear by hand.
Kermie Cam - Grumman Duck - Part 3: https://youtu.be/fCFhxiUcsTw?t=20s


Wheels

I follow Kermit Weeks on Facebook. Whoever said not to envy thy neighbour can stuff it!

Nice pics, OG. Also nice to get some stick time in a Bonanza. Was it a V-tail, or a later model?

It was the conventional tail. Very nice airplane. Honest flyer with good visibility. Very nicely equipped avionics.

A 530, a 430 and the S-Tec autopilot. Nice setup, I flew a Seneca with the same panel in flight school.
I'd like to try a T-34 Mentor. The Bonanza's big brother

nice pictures