Bits and Pieces from the Spanish Air Museum

To finish off a week of posts on the Museo Del Aire in Madrid, I'm including some photos that didn't fit anywhere else. While the main attraction of this free museum is the great collection of aircraft, it has collections of related artifacts and engages in restoration work. The above photo shows some of the random bits lying around waiting for a caring hand. Can anyone out there identify this stuff?
The museum has a nice collection of airport vehicles, from mobile control towers to old firefighting equipment.
This is the first museum display I've seen dedicated to flare pistols. There was another one just for tachometers that I probably should have taken a photo of.
There's also a good collection of maps. This one shows positions during and right after the amphibious landing at Alhucemas in 1925 during the Third Rif War. I talked about this historic landing more in my biplanes and triplanes post.
This map shows the locations of airfields at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, along with the numbers and types of planes both sides had. What's interesting is that the Republican government had almost four times as many planes as Franco's forces, but that soon changed with various generals rallying to the junta and Germany and Italy providing equipment for the Fascist war effort. I apologize for the small size of these two maps but that's as big as Blogsmith will display them. Researchers who want full-size photos are welcome to contact me.
Here's an interesting rarity. This is a flag commemorating the Green March, a brilliant public relations event by the Moroccan government in 1975 in which an estimated 350,000 unarmed civilians marched across the border into the Spanish colony of Western Sahara. Spanish border troops were ordered not to fire on the demonstrators and soon left. The Spaniards had been planning to leave anyway after being ground down by a two-year war with Polisario, a Sahrawi independence movement. The Moroccans got the land but inherited the war. The region is still in legal limbo, with Morocco claiming it as theirs and other countries refusing to recognize their rule. Polisario still exists, although there's no fighting at the moment.

The flag is covered with symbols such as a map showing Morocco and Western Sahara as one land, a camel, and the number 350,000 to celebrate the large number of participants. Green is the color of Islam. While the Sahrawis are Muslim too, green was used to say that this was a movement of Muslims against a Christian colonial power.

Biplanes and Triplanes at the Spanish Air Museum

Look familiar? Yep, it's the Red Baron's famous Fokker Dr.1 triplane! Well, actually it's a replica, but cool nonetheless. Welcome to my fifth installment of posts on the Museo del Aire in Madrid. This was only one of the planes the Red Baron flew, but it's the most famous because it's the one he made his last 20 victories in and was the one he was shot down in. No originals survive, although there are many replicas.

The Fokker Dr.1 had a maximum speed of 165 km/hr, a range of 200 km, and a maximum altitude of 6100 meters. It was 5.77 meters long, 2.95 meters high, with a wingspan of 7.19 meters. It was armed with two Spandau 7.92 mm machine guns. My four-year-old son loved this plane. He knew about biplanes but I don't think he'd ever seen a bright red triplane before.

While I usually take a dim view of Wikipedia, the entry on the Red Baron has a good collection of old film clips about him.
Boxy, but nice. the De Havilland DH-4 was a British zeppelin hunter in World War One. The Spanish bought 46 of them to use in their war in Morocco for surveillance, bombing, and supply missions. Its large cargo capacity proved handy in supplying positions that had been cut off, something that happened to the Spanish a lot in that war. It had a maximum speed of 220 km/hr, and was armed with two .303 Lewis machine guns and a dozen bombs. It could reach 6,700 meters in altitude, is 9.35 meters long, 3.09 meters high, with a wingspan of 12.93 meters.
We'll wrap things up with the Bristol F-2B, another British biplane that saw service in WWI and with the Spanish in Morocco. It played a key role in providing air cover for the landing at Alhucemas in 1925, which was the first amphibious landing to have air cover, and the first motorized amphibious landing. A total of 64 served in Morocco, often making close strafing passes on infantry that was dubbed "Flying Spanish style." Brave perhaps, but it led to twelve of them getting shot down. Armaments included a forward 7.7 mm Vickers machine gun, while the observer was armed with two .303 Lewis guns.

This weekend: a few more random photos that didn't fit in any of my previous posts!

Balloons and helicopters at Spain's Air Museum

Welcome to my fourth installment about the Museo del Aire in Madrid. First we're going a bit retro with an artist's reconstruction of a daring attempt at flight in 1793. Spanish inventor Diego Marín Aguilera decided it would be fun to make a pair of flapping wings complete with bird feathers and jump off the top of a castle. He did his calculations correctly and managed to make it 360 meters before landing. Well, actually he crashed, but as the old pilot's saying goes, "Any landing you walk away from is a good landing" and Aguilera walked away with only a few bruises. It's doubtful that his flapping did much good; he had really developed a decent glider. Not bad for someone who herded sheep for a living. Unfortunately the ignorant peasants he lived with thought he was a heretic and burnt his contraption before he got to improve it.

Here's a diorama of the Spanish balloon brigade. There wasn't any information on this in the display, but it appears from the uniforms to be a reconstruction of the late nineteenth century. Most European powers had balloon brigades by then because balloons had proved useful in the American Civil War and Franco-Prussian War. If anyone has more information about these guys I'd love to hear about it.
Here's the product of another Spanish inventor, Juan de la Cierva. He developed the first stable autogyro, the predecessor to the helicopter, in 1923. That helicopter was called the C4 prototype, and the machine pictured above is a replica of a C6. Some improvements had been made but as you can see, it still looks very much like an airplane. None of the earlier autogyros flew very far or very well, but the C6 was able to make a distance of seven miles, proving that this alternative to the airplane had potential. The flight left from Cuatro Vientos (Four Winds) airfield outside of Madrid, next to where the Museo del Aire stands today. The C6 is nine meters long, weighs 900 kilos, and has a maximum velocity of 100km/hr.
I had to take this photo because my son has a helicopter much like this, complete with spinning rotors and a retractable stretcher. He runs search-and-rescue operations in our living room all the time. This is a Sikorsky-Westland S-55, an American helicopter introduced in 1949 and one of the first truly viable helicopters for regular use. Compare it with the C6 above and you can see how much progress aviation engineers made in 26 years. It has a maximum velocity of 180 km/hr, is 12.71 meters long, and 4.03 meters high.
I love retro Soviet stuff, although the Stalin bus in St. Petersburg is going too far. This Mil Mi-2 Hoplite is just the ticket, incorporating drab green Soviet chic with a timeless hammer-and-sickle motif. Introduced as a military helicopter in 1965, it is still in wide use today for basic transport, forestry, air ambulance, and fire protection missions. Some developing countries, notably North Korea, still use these for military purposes.

Coming up tomorrow: biplanes!

The strange little airplane that became a movie star

Does this little plane look familiar? Perhaps it would look more familiar all banged up and flying over the Australian outback with Mel Gibson in it? That's right, it featured in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome!

Introducing the Transavia PL-12 Airtruk, which in the first scene of the movie flies down out of the skies to attack Max as he's driving his disabled police car across the desert with the help of a team of camels. Jedediah the Pilot, played by Bruce Spence, knocks Max off the top of the car and steals the vehicle. Later in the movie Jedediah and Max team up. The pilot flies a group of kids to safety with Tina Turner and a bunch of leather daddies in hot pursuit. Max clears the way for them in a cool fight scene but is left behind, doomed to be the eternal outsider.

The PL-12 was introduced by the Australian company Transavia in 1966 for bush work such as search and rescue, ambulance duty, and agriculture and is a compact, highly maneuverable vehicle perfect for post-apocalyptic hijinks. It has a maximum speed of 195 km/hr, is 6.35 meters long, 2.79 meters high, with a wingspan of 11.98 meters.

I've heard rumors that they're making another in the Mad Max series. I hope that's true, and I hope we get to see Jedediah the Pilot make a reappearance. He was always my favorite character. Hey Bruce Spence, if you happen to be googling yourself (no shame there, I do it all the time) could you tell us your memories of working with this cool plane?

Coming up tomorrow: helicopters and balloons!

Training the Luftwaffe in peacetime

During the Spanish Civil War and World War Two, the Luftwaffe was the most feared air force in the world, but it came from very humble beginnings. After the Germans lost World War One, the Treaty of Versailles made them give up their air force. The rest of Europe didn't want any more Red Barons flying around!

Once Hitler came to power in 1933 he set about rebuilding Germany's military might. He wanted a strong air force, but couldn't have any planes and in the early years he was not yet powerful enough to defy the rest of Europe. So he ordered a fleet of these gliders to train his pilots.
It's called the Aisa/Schneider SG-38 Schulgleiter ("training glider") and it trained a whole generation of German pilots on the basics of flight. They were considered sports equipment and therefore didn't fall under the ban of the Treaty of Versailles. This was a common trick of the early Third Reich, which had lots of "sports clubs" and "sports equipment" to train its young men for the next round of slaughter and ruin.
Still, it's a pretty cool glider, even if it was used for bad purposes. It would take a fair amount of guts to go aloft in one of these! For those techies out there, it's 6.28 meters long, 2.43 meters high, and has a wingspan of 10.41 meters. It weighs 95.12 kilos empty. Maximum safe speed is 30 km/hr but one brave pilot got it up to 110 km/hr. The sign didn't say who that was but I'm betting he gave the Royal Air Force a bit of trouble.

These photos were taken at the Air Museum in Madrid, Spain. I've already posted some other photos from the Museo del Aire and will be posting every day this week, so tune in for some cool aircraft.

Tomorrow: The strange little airplane that became a movie star!

Painless travel with a four year-old

I just traveled from Madrid to Oxford with my wife and four-year-old son. This involved a twenty-minute taxi ride, two hours waiting at the airport (where I photographed a cop playing solitaire), a two-hour flight, an hour bus ride and another short taxi ride.

Doing this with a four-year-old? Piece of cake.

My son loves travel. Perhaps it's genetic, but more likely it's because he's enchanted with cars, planes, boats, buses, basically anything with a motor. Plus we make sure of three things when we're traveling:

1. He has enough to eat. A hungry kid is a grumpy kid.

2. He's comfortable. Not too hot, not too cold, and that he gets enough sleep.

3. He's entertained. We always bring coloring materials and some books, as well as a surprise. Usually it's a big glossy magazine about trains or cars. This time around it was a scuba diving magazine. We've been watching Jacques Cousteau together and I've promised him that we'll do scuba lessons for his 16th birthday. Flipping through pictures of sharks and coral reefs burned up more than an hour of flight time.

If you follow these three simple steps you can be pretty sure your kid will have an enjoyable travel experience and you won't want to kill them before landing. My son has traveled a fair amount and we've had no major blowups. Of course, we didn't take him on our road trip in Ethiopia. We'll have to wait until he's at least six for that.

Collecting Barf Bags

After the postive response I got to my post on collectible barf bags, I couldn't help but do an interview with Paul Mundy, dedicated baggist and the man behind bagophily.com, one of the leading websites for the hobby of airsickness bag collecting and trading. Thanks to Paul for doing this interview and allowing me to post an image of the beautiful and odd design of the Finnaviation bag.

So the first thing everyone is wondering is: why barf bags? How did you get into this?

Do you have children? If so, you probably know that as soon as they get into your father-in-law’s car, they will throw up. We started to collect bags to cater for such emergencies: they’re good at protecting the interior décor of luxury cars. After a few years we discovered the chemical alternative – Dramamine – a simple pill prevents carsickness and has the added advantage of making the child drowsy. Just think of the benefits – no more splatter on the seats, and no more “are we there yet?” every three minutes. Our modest collection of bags went into a box.
A couple of years later my wife was clearing stuff out, and she wanted to throw the bags away. But some of them were pretty – I remember a very decorative Air Afrique with Yoruba masks. So I started to collect them.

What's the prize of your collection? Are there any rare bags you're still trying to get?

Finnaviation is every baggist’s dream bag. It shows a stylized reindeer barfing ice cubes. And I have one!
The Space Shuttle bag is probably the most sought-after bag on the planet. It’s a sturdy bag made of canvas that fits over your face like a horse’s nosebag. Can’t be too careful in zero-gravity. It has a clear plastic base so you can inspect the contents. A lot of thought went into its design. And doubtless the price pushes up the cost of the shuttle by a couple of million. I wish I had one.
Air Force One? Got one of them, but they’re pretty boring – a plain white plastic bag that comes in an envelope with instructions: "Motion sickness bag (For use during moments of stomach upset): If an upset stomach is anticipated, remove bag from this container and keep ready for use. Do not be embarrassed by this precaution as even veteran travelers are subject to occasional motion sickness.”
I hope that once Obama has dealt with the financial crisis and health care and Iraq and Afghanistan that he will find time to have a better bag designed.

Do you dream about barf bags?

No. But it sounds like a good idea. I’ll let you know if a bag features in my next dream.

Have you ever used a bag for its originally intended purpose? Was it a rare one? (I promise to tell my own air sickness story if you tell yours, or even if you don't)

No, but my wife and son have often done so. On one ferry trip from Denmark to Norway , my son and I were decorating some plain white bags with crayons. We hit a big wave, and he threw up. I’m happy to say that he had the presence of mind to miss the bag and puke on the floor. What’s your story?

Well, I didn't blow chunks myself, but I came close. I was in an eight-seater Cessna in Peru. We were on a special flight over the Nazca Lines and the plane kept banking hard from left to right so everyone could get a clear view. They'd supplied us with bags, boring little plastic baggies, not real airsickness bags at all. I was doing fine until the Dutch girl in front of me grabbed her bag and filled it. The smell of vomit filled the tiny cabin, and I nearly lost it. Luckily that was near the end of the flight so I made it back to Earth with my stomach and bag intact.

Have you ever gotten in trouble for swiping a bag?

I was at passport control once when the bags I had stolen on board the plane fell out from under my jacket onto the floor. Embarrassing, but luckily there were no other collectors around, so no mad scramble for bags ensued.

Do you collect other airline ephemera?

No. I used to pick up safety cards to swap for bags, but my wife has banned this. She thinks the plane will fall out of the sky if there’s no safety card in the seat pocket in front of you.

There's a small but active group of bag collectors on the web. When did baggists start realizing there were others out there with the same interests?

I first realized there were kindred souls when I created my own website. I wanted to learn how to do websites, and bags are an idea way to start: they’re colourful and entertaining. I created my site, then did a search – and found that there were already several other sites devoted to this noble avocation. Some collectors were already in contact with each other – they meet at collectors’ fairs and the like. But the internet makes contact and trading so much easier.

So where do you see the hobby headed? Is it in a growth period right now?

Sadly, it’s going commercial. Most of the trade now seems to take place on eBay. The bags-for-cash business is growing, with some bags fetching hundreds of euros. That’s good in some ways – it means that rare bags have a value, so non-collectors put them on the market rather than throwing them away. But it means there’s an increasing gap between the hobby collectors (like me – I don’t buy or sell) and the pros.

Some People Will Collect Anything

If you follow this blog you'll know that I like to collect paper ephemera, especially postcards, but it never ceases to amaze me what some people will find collectible. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Dutchman Niek Vermeulen has the world's largest collection of air sickness bags. That's right, barf bags. Presumably unused barf bags. At last count he had 5,468 of them from 1,065 airlines.

He's not alone. An international network of "baggists" swap air sickness bags at Bagophily.com, "the magical world of air sickness bags". The site features news and views from the world of barf bag collecting, as well as a Hall of Fame and gallery.

I don't want to hear anyone tell me I'm weird for collecting postcards ever again.

Airport Cafeteria Napkin Art

What's with airlines lately? I haven't had a plane take off in time for the past six months. This latest flight from Madrid to London was delayed four hours. . .for a two hour flight! They did give us a free sandwich and a drink, though, which doesn't really make up for it. What did give me a little smile as I sat for endless hours in the Barajas Airport cafeteria was spotting this bit of napkin art. Some bored passenger from an earlier flight drew this forest scene on one of their napkins, and so they framed it and put it on the wall. An artistic solution to an age-old travel problem.

Mobile phones on planes? No thanks!

I'm so happy I could puke. It was just announced today that mobile phones (cell phones to you Yanks) have just been approved for flights within Europe. New technology means they won't interfere with navigation systems. They'll be available on Air France as early as next month, with Ryanair soon to follow.

Great. Now I can be surrounded by yakking idiots on the plane too. I used to enjoy flights because it was one of the rare times I could get some quiet reading done. Now I have to tolerate people screaming into their mobiles. Time to invest in a pair of ear plugs.