Passat Ornithopter

[AAC Cadet Leader]

thanks, steve. uh, what's on the wet side of the hut?

if tom p's reading this, how 'bout posting that great pic you had of the passat ornithopter airborne?

[kfsip]

Demoiselle for one.

And in this techological age, can't they make a Fokker Face emoticon?

[AAC Cadet Leader]

oh no, not the pretty little demoiselle...

[SteveS]

Originally Posted by AAC Cadet Leader

oh no, not the pretty little demoiselle...

Actually, the Demoiselle would (was) be in the Pioneer hut. In the WW1 hut across from the Passat would be (from front to rear) the Deperdussin, Coles Triplane, the Nieuport II N and the Se5A. The Sopwith Dolphin is supposedly being worked on and the Raab-Katzenstein Glider is well...gone.

Scattered throughout all three of the Quonset huts are engines, parts and cars of the collection. All three of the huts do have issues with leaks, gaps and just plain age.




Salute,
Steve

[AAC Cadet Leader]

repairs to the buildings and some humidity control would be nice. waay overdue.

aside from that...

what happened to ALL THE STUFF?
it used to be, you couldn't even see the bottom half of the walls in any of the museum quonset huts, because Cole had so many treasures packed in there. that picture looks like they've completely emptied out all Cole's rare engines, antique autos, motorcycles, huge paintings, propellers and other collection items that lined every wall in all three museum huts.

[SL DIII]

Hi,
Many of those things were moved back in 2001/2002 into the History of Flight building (main museum building) by volunteers to keep them better protected from the elements than the Quonset huts could allow. This included the Thomas Morse, the Nieuport 10, several of the Lou Mallard paintings, a few engines one or two motorcycles and a bunch of propellers.

The Quonset buildings have had issues with leaks and pests for a long time (probably from when they were first built). It would be great to see this forum used by the Aerodrome to seek assistance to get those things taken care of... wouldn’t that make sense? I would imagine that there are readers here who may have the means to assist (access to materials, equipment, skills, time, finances, etc.) and would care enough about the preservation of the collection to somehow help.

AAC…since you asked, here’s another rare shot of Jim Hare flying the Passatt Ornithopter back at the “turn of the century,” (2000 or thereabouts).



Best regards,
Tom P.
PS – okay…that’s a photo-shopped image. At least I’ll admit when I’m fibbing.

[AAC Cadet Leader]

thank you, tom. and thank you for all you've done for old rhinebeck aerodrome over the years.

well, now that's a different passat pic than the other one you had. this one with jim is good, too. still have the other pic?