Duxford Imperial War museum

Today we went to Duxford, an impressive air museum just 15 minutes away.
This is where they hold all the big air shows, in 2 weeks we will be going to watch the legends of air air show, all the old spitfires, mustangs lancasters etc.

This place is pretty amazing, I could go on but I would bore some of you to death, kinda like Chrissy was today :) She claimed she enjoyed it and found it interesting though.

The Concorde was cool, it was a prototype. Setup with avionics and instruments (including on board cameras near the jets etc) to record how it all worked.
The B52 was so massive! Can you see the pic of the tail with all the other planes around it?! The pic up the wing?
The big piece of round metal under the wing is actually a part of the worlds largest gun that Saddam was making before he got busted. There were companies all around the world making parts for it unknowingly, this part was made in the UK. Would have been ironic had he pulled it off?!

By far the most impressive craft was the blackbird (looks like a sting ray according to Chrissy)
Dordles along at 3.5 the speed of sound 25 k's above the earth.
A pilots perspective was written on the plaque describibg being able to look out at the stars that seemed 3D, then look down and watch the tornadoes over the ocean. Imagine how quick the countries slipped by at that speed!?
It had a computer that navigated by the stars above rather than radar, this avoided any detection.
The black paint turns blue at speed (heat activated)
The plane got so hot it needed a special fuel. then it used so much that they had tanks everywhere.
someof the tanks wrapped around where the wheels went inside to keep them cool.
The wing tips were around 900 degrees!
There are a lot of panels on the craft that are rippled like corrugate. This is to allow expansion.
After the plane landed it couldn't be touched for 1/2 an hour, so the pilots had to sit around. this is because it was so damn hot! They had massive fans to cool it all down.

didn't know Dan (Rohde) ran his own airline over here neither? Where are mates rates tickets Dan!

Over and out!