Knights Without Parachutes — museum

If you get the chance to visit the VAFM in person, your first priority should be to get a tour from Andy Parks; there's nobody else in the world with his knowledge of the people in the collection as well as personal experience of aviation and with building WWI replicas. But after that, talk to some of the mechanics and ask them how they build WWI airplanes with the materials, fuels, and regulations of a century later. 

We are back from the Dawn Patrol airshow. Highlights included Dogfights in the dawn's early light, performed by RC aircraft. They looked pretty real at that hour. You could tell them from the real aircraft flying later in the day in a couple ways: the RC engines sounded a bit less like something that might quit, and the real pilots, not needing to do so to save their lives in actual battle, did not do maneuvers as aggressive as the RC aircraft. Young boys getting hooked on the Wings of Glory WWI board game and the WOFF WWI simulator. Smart...

We are headed for Dayton, for the Dawn Patrol airshow at Wright-Patterson AFB, on 1 and 2 October 2016. The Vintage Aero Flying Museum (VAFM) is bringing its SPAD replica and some displays from the museum. This year, the biennial airshow is commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Lafayette Escadrille. Several families of the original Escadrille members are expected to be there, including VAFM friend Lt. Col Rutgers, descendant of James Norman Hall. Following in the footsteps of his father, who arranged reunions in the 1980s for surviving WWI pilots, Andy Parks will be part of a banquet honoring the...

Since the VAFM will be taking the SPAD to the Dawn Patrol airshow in Dayton this October, Andy Parks will not be available to hold the second-Saturday open house and talk that were scheduled for September 10th and October 8th. We were working on having a substitute talk, but the speaker is sick. You could, of course, come to Dayton and talk to Andy in person! Andy's planned talk about the Lost Battalion and Cher Ami, the heroic pigeon, will be postponed to the second Saturday in November, November 12th, also known as the day after the 98th anniversary of Armistice...

Gustav Leffers, German ace, will be the subject of this second-Saturday open house talk, Saturday August 13th, at noon during the 10-4 open house at the VAFM. Andy Parks will be speaking about Leffers, one of the original German aces, who was a combat veteran already when the Red Baron was just starting out. Leffers received the "Blue Max" medal, the 11th recipient for Germany. He was killed flying a French plane he had captured. The transcript of last month's talk is almost finished; it is available as "Hard Luck Ace".