Jun 032010
 

Here’s something ya don’t see every day…

 Yesterday I went to Logan to procure some more prints (“blue” and “photo”) and do some generic running around and time killing. On my way out of town I saw something odd in the sky, so I pulled over to photograph it… it was a Boeing B-17 bomber.

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As it was heading in the direction of the Logan airport, I decided to turn around and see if that was where it was going. As it turns out, yes. It’s the EAA’s “Aluminum Overcast.” It apparently pulled into town yesterday, along with a number of trucks and vans as support vehicles; today (and tomorrow) it was to open up shop and fly paying customers around. While that would undoubtedly ahve been cool and somethign that I would certainly have gotten a kick out of… the $425 price tag is just a bit steep, and impossible to justify. Oh well.

Anyway, while it was just sitting there anyway, I took some photos…

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And I made some panoramas that I think came out pretty well…

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 Posted by at 10:09 pm

  12 Responses to “Aluminum Overcast”

  1. That’s a pleasant surprise — I flew on this plane a couple of years ago.

    An amazing plane. The control cables run along the inner walls, and I’ll bet the crew knew exactly which cable twitch meant they were turning around and going home.

  2. That was the one that was up here in Jamestown last year.
    I didn’t get inside of it, but finally got a good look at the inside of the Sperry Ball Turret.
    There’s a really interesting article on aircraft gun turrets here:
    http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2008/07/weekend-wings-25-air-gunners.html

  3. Way cool!!!!! That ship was at the Venango County Airshow a few years ago, not giving rides, else we would have been $850 in the hole. There was also a Zero, a Corsair, B 25, and a Grumman F4F biplane. Love me some radial engine rumble, oh yea!!!!!!

  4. I learned at the local framer that they can print digital images directly to canvas now. As such perhaps we could discuss terms for the full-resolution file for the first image there. I like them all – thank you for taking the time to capture and share them – but the first one in particular stands out.

    Jim

  5. I was lucky enough to get a ride in the Collins Foundation B-17 a few years ago, and yes it was worth every penny. I could not believe how tiny that fuselage is, and you can see that it provides about as much protection against incoming rounds as a crush-proof Marlboro pack. My hat’s off to the men (and women) who flew them.

    http://www.collingsfoundation.org/menu.htm

  6. > I learned at the local framer that they can print digital images directly to canvas now.

    Yes. It’s pricy, but it does more or less actually kinda look like a high-quality painting.

    >As such perhaps we could discuss terms for the full-resolution file for the first image there.

    Ummm… the one with the light pole???

  7. The one I meant was in fact the third one, with the shiny dome on the prop etc.

    Jim

  8. Ah, that makes more sense. Yeah, it is kinda nice. If you’re really interested, I will check into getting a canvas version of it made. It was a single photo, not a panorama, so it might not blow up to 24X36 all that well… but then, if it’s converted to a “painting” on canvas, the slight pixelation that would be visible as a regular photo print might not be visible.

  9. George Allegrezza wrote:
    “I could not believe how tiny that fuselage is, and you can see that it provides about as much protection against incoming rounds as a crush-proof Marlboro pack.”
    I noticed that also; when you actually run into WW II bombers in real life they seem a lot smaller than you expected.

  10. […] week ago I took some photos of a gleaming B-17 in the open air at the Logan airport. Some seemed to think that the engine photo […]

  11. […] bit less than a year and a half ago, I stumbled across the B-17 Aluminum Overcast purely by chance: I was in Logan, Utah, and saw a B-17 fly over. As anyone would, I drove to the nearest airport, and […]

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