Model Airplanes

CHICOPEE, MA (WGGB/WSHM) –

Wednesday marked the end of an era at the Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee. 

The last of the giant C-5 model B airplanes stationed at Westover took off for the very last time.

The giant cargo planes are a familiar sight and sound in Western Mass. 

Airmen at the 439th airlift wing have flown the A and B models of the C-5 since 1987.  

Only 8 remained at the base, and on Wednesday, the last of the fleet are headed to Georgia where they will be modernized before returning to Westover. 

“Today is another historic chapter of aviation history at Westover, the base has been here for 77 years and today is another chapter,” said Master Sergeant Andrew Biscoe. 

This airplane that left on Wednesday is becomming a C-5M Super Galaxy. That means the airplane will be modified.  The most noticeable modification will be it’s engines. When it comes back here as a C-5M the engines will be quieter, more fuel efficient,” Biscoe continued. 

The first C-5M is expected to arrive back at Westover in late spring.  

The entire modernized fleet of C-5’s should be in place at the Chicopee base by the summer of 2018.

Copyright 2017 Western Mass News (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved. 

Article source: http://www.westernmassnews.com/story/34291075/final-c-5-fleet-leaves-westover-air-reserve-base

Editor’s note: This story was originally published on June 29, 2014. 

A vintage Piper Cub airplane hangs from the cafeteria’s ceiling. Down the hall, a helicopter sits in a lobby-sized area. A nearby office showcases the military pilot career of the office-dweller. An oversized room at one end of the school holds stacks of under-construction model airplanes and tools.

It has the feel of an aviation company’s headquarters.

But look closer.

There’s a high school student reading a book behind the helicopter. In a classroom, two freshman girls are dressed in Greek costumes as they lead their English class. In front of the school, parents drop off their children.

It’s the combination of aviation with a more traditional high school curriculum that attracts students to West Michigan Aviation, a charter high school in Grand Rapids in front of the Gerald R. Ford International Airport.

Less than 4 years old, the school has more than 400 students and uses aviation across all content areas. Its focus is on the STEM subjects — science, technology, engineering and math.The school doesn’t offer band or many sports.

“We want kids who like to tinker,” said Patrick Cwayna, the school’s CEO and the former longtime principal of East Grand Rapids High School. “We want to fill a niche.”

Students wear uniforms, and the school has seven-hour days.

Freshmen take electives that introduce them to aviation, and

Article source: http://www.freep.com/story/news/education/2017/01/18/grand-rapids-charter-school/96722360/

MEXICO CITY, Jan 16, 2017: Even as a child, Roberto Shimizu loved collecting things.

So when his Japanese immigrant father opened a stationery and toy store in Mexico City in 1940, Shimizu began a lifelong quest to save and collect toys.

More than seven decades later, that youthful fascination lives on in the Antique Toy Museum, a four-story building packed with objects that transport visitors back to a nostalgic past.

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Tucked in the middle of the capital’s historic but seedy Doctores neighborhood, it is stuffed with Legos, superhero action figures, robots, model airplanes, trains and Hello Kitty.

There are also “lucha libre” wrestling masks and old traditional Mexican toys and other playthings that are reminders of the country’s once-robust toy industry that has all but disappeared following the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Shimizu still helps out occasionally, but the museum is now run by his son, Roberto Y. Shimizu Kinoshita, who is struggling after a congressional decision to stop allocating cultural funds for the collection.

The museum has had to cut staff by half and most of its cultural events and workshops have been suspended, says the son, who hopes to raise money for

Article source: http://www.newsgram.com/seven-decade-fascination-for-toys-lives-on-in-the-antique-toy-museum-in-mexico/

New York:  Exactly one week after becoming president-elect, Donald Trump stepped outside his namesake fortress here for the first time. He ventured just five blocks, to dinner at the 21 Club – a dark-mahogany-and-red-leather-banquette throwback, where model airplanes and sports memorabilia hang from the ceiling, and jackets are de rigueur for men.

The vintage haunt, where Trump dined with family members, feels like home. The waiters know his preferred table (No. 14, which Frank Sinatra and Richard M. Nixon also used) and his regular order (the $36 burger, well done, with fries).

So it has been for the president-elect, who has retreated to one comfortable, familiar refuge after another – his soaring Manhattan tower, his white leather-upholstered Boeing jet, his lush golf courses, his opulent beachside castle.

Trump is a man isolated, increasingly cocooned away from the voters who lifted him to his seemingly improbable victory. He favors his own people and his own places, creating the veneer of accessibility – his tweets reach millions, and he still answers his cellphone – while placing himself in almost entirely habitual settings.

He spends most of his days in Trump Tower, with few close friends and few meaningful one-on-one interactions beyond the family members, advisers and loyalists who are whisked by gold-colored elevator to his 26th-floor office for private audiences. Trump rarely leaves, not even for a breath

Article source: http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/donald-trump-waits-in-his-tower-accessible-yet-isolated-1649977