Great variety of old advertising from QuestionableAdvice.tumblr.com (Centuries of Advertisements and Advice)

It's like Shorpy for advertisements! Very cool collection, enjoy more at http://questionableadvice.tumblr.com/

Shortest take off and landing contest in Valdez Alaska

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/05/bush-plane-competition-spurs-innovation/has a good gallery of the planes and the innovations that are used to get off the ground faster, ans land slowerhttp://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/05/video-bush-pilot-competition-how-slow-can-you-go/ tells the story of Josh and how his 890 feet total take off and landing was only good enough for 3rdand http://

102 yr old Bleriot designed aircraft with a 100 yr old engine flys for the first time

 Experimmental Aviation Assoiciation enthuisiasts decided to undergo 1000's of hours to build an aircraft to the design specs planned out 102 years ago. http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/06/flying-a-102-year-old-design-for-the-first-time/#more-36045and the source of their story: http://eaa.org/news/2011/2011-06-06_bleriot.asp which has the full uncondensed storyEAA’s project also commemorates the

1909 Grand Palais Air Show in Paris

 I have had the top photo so long I don't know where it came from, the bottom two are from http://dieselpunk.livejournal.com/409946.html#cutid1above image Robert Esnault Pelterie Monoplane at Exposition, 1909 from http://edwardianera.tumblr.com/

P51 Mustang field service reference manual... its astonishing what you can stumble across at the swap meet, selected interesting pages

  

I just watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, and wondered about that Nazi flying wing

The Nazi Flying Wing seen in the film was not a real plane. Raiders production designer Norman Reynolds designed the plane for the film, based on historical Northrop Corporation designs and drawings by Ron Cobb of the Horten Ho-2-29. The fake plane was built by Vickers, and was painted in London at EMI Elstree Studios. In order to ship the unwieldy prop to Tunisia, it had to be disassembled and

1920 Dayton-Wright RB-1

Dayton-Wright RB-1 was built in 1920, a racing aircraft developed in the United States to participate in the 1920 Gordon Bennett Cup air race. The aircraft was a high-wing monoplane with retractable landing gear undercarriage operated by a hand-crank making it one of the first instances of undercarriage retraction for aerodynamic benefit alone, clearly ahead of his time. With a monocoque fuselage

Just a gust of wind

This misfortunate pilot landed his vintage tri-plane on its nose. The man had been flying the famous Fokker Dreidecker aircraft at the Flying Legends airshow at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, Cambsridgeshire. But when he landed the WW1 fighter aircraft a sudden gust of wind blew it on its nose. No one was hurt in the incident. (Philip Tyler / Rex) http://news.yahoo.com/photos/

Ruth Law, first of many record setting barnstormer pilots, bought her first airplane from the Wright Brothers

photo from http://steampunkvehicles.tumblr.com/  info from http://earlyaviators.com/eoliver.htm and http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/law.htmlRuth Law Oliver, the first woman to loop the loop in an airplane, the first to make a night flight and the one- time holder of the Chicago to New York aerial speed record bought her first airplane in 1912 from Orville Wright when she was 21 years old.

Every now and then then landing gear won't operate when you need it most, like the South Pacific in 1945

But that day wasn't a bad one, USMC pilot Ken Pruitt ran it out of fuel, and then coasted onto an atoll airstrip nice a slow and safe. Each of the 5 crewmembers decided to ride it out rather than parachute down... and they all walked away. Read about it at http://www.lyonairmuseum.org/news/b-25-belly-landing-on-pacific-island/

Burnelli airplane transporting a car in a underslung

I don't recall where I found this photo, for a bit about Burnelli aircraft: http://justacargal-s.blogspot.com/2011/02/burnelli-or-northrop-flying-wing.html