Planes on sticks.

[den]

I hate seeing old planes mounted on pedestals in parks, in front of airports and such, where they are allowed to deteriorate in the weather.

Old planes should be flying or in museums. This is my Planes Not On Sticks icon..

Comments

[arcturax.livejournal.com]

Damn right. Wright Patterson has only one plane on a stick and that is because it will probably never fly again and was damaged to begin with.

The rest of their planes are indoors except for a few that are kept outside but are well cared for.

They have some really neat planes to, including one with propellers on the rear, a Russian MIG covered in nuke labels and scary red writing, a stealth fighter and the vaunted SR-71 blackbird, the real deal. The plane that is still classified enough that they removed every square inch of the cockpit interior before putting it up on display.

Next to it is the starter box, which contains a V12 engine which is needed to produce enough power to start up the main engines on that thing.

[jamesb]

Actually, the SR-71 starter box contains two hot-rodded Pontiac engines linked together (although some people swear that the starter contained a pair of Buick Wildcats).

[arcturax.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think you are right, I was quoting this from memory. But the gist is, it takes a lot of horsepower to get those things going :P

[jamesb]

I did some research, and the early ones used Buick engines, and the later ones used big-block Chevys.

Details here.