747-100 ... NO PROBLEM!

Auggie and I went to the Hiller Aviation museum today. Like so many things, it turns out this is an awesome place that I drove by every day for nearly 10 years without giving it a thought. It is the brainchild of Stanley Hiller, a lord, and should be on the list for every fan of flight. For more about Stanley, go here http://www.hiller.org/in_memory.shtml

Why is it so legendary? In addition to about a hundred other exhibits, planes, helicopters, and flight simulators, they have the front 37 feet of a 747-100 which you are welcome to tour. Yes, only the first 37 feet. The story about getting it there is almost as interesting as going through it - it was a retired British Airway jet that last flew commercially in 1998. Sold to an aircraft dismantler, it was flown to the junkyard in Arizona. The owner of the scrap company donated it to Stanley, who raised the money from a bunch of retired Flying Tigers pilots to move it here. They cut it into three pieces latitudinally and loaded it on flatbeds! It was re-assembled at the mueseum - where Auggie "flew" it this morning ... cool thing to be in, learned a lot about flying these planes from the retired pilot we met there. For instance, until the mid-eighties, the navigator on a 747-100 took celestial readings through a clear glass port built into the ceiling of the cockpit! Yes, with a version of a sextant and a paper map!