Model Airplanes

Today-Sept. 25

•Exhibit: International Posters for a Digital Age, Southern Miss’ Gallery of Art and Design, George Hurst Building.

Today-Sept. 27

•Exhibit: Escape to Tranquility: The New American Landscape, Lauren Rogers Museum of Art. Forty-five paintings featuring landscapes without human interaction or presence.

Today-Sept. 29

•Event: Baby Story Time, 1:30 p.m. Tuesdays, “Mother Goose on the Loose,” Hattiesburg Library. For babies birth to 2 years.

Today-Sept. 30

•Event: Fifth- and sixth-grade pottery classes, 3:30-5 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Carriage House Studio. Supplies included. To sign up or for details: (601) 649-6374, LRMA.org under “classes” or email mbuchanan@LRMA.org.

•Exhibit: “Integration: Reflections from the Sarah Gillespie Collection,” 1-4 p.m. Monday-Friday or by appointment, William Carey University. Details: (601) 318-6561.

Today-Nov. 15

•Exhibit: “Civil War Era Drawings from the Becker Collection,” Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Lower Level Galleries.

Today-April

•Event: smART Space, 3:30-5:30 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, C.E. Roy Community Center. Hattiesburg Arts Council’s after-school art program for ages 4-14. Free classes in creative movement, music, theater games and visual art. Details: Rebekah Johnson, (601) 583-6005.

Today

•Meeting: Hattiesburg Area Daylily Society, 2 p.m., Extension Service Conference Room, Forrest County Multi Purpose Center. Speaker: Horticulturist Gary Bachman of Ocean Springs. Plant auction, door prizes, refreshments.

Article source: http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/story/news/local/2015/09/19/community-calendar-september/72489716/

Autumn’s first bumper crop of auctions comes to market over the next few weeks as Concept Art Gallery sets up for the first of its three year-ending sales, along with Mark Ferry Auctioneers revving up for an antique auto event packed with classic chassis from the U.S. and U.K. — plus an airplane and military vehicles.

Mark Ferry Auctioneers

Bidders won’t find any pink Cadillacs on the block during Mark Ferry’s Sept. 26 sale of classic and soon-to-be antique autos. But they can set their sights on a fleet of coveted cars ranging from sporty Chevys to nearly pristine Packards.

One of the true finds is a 1954 Corvette convertible with matching original manufacturer’s numbers on the six-cylinder engine and other parts. It’s rare to find a vehicle with its factory-installed mechanical insides intact. Though in need of repairs, this second-year model of Chevy’s signature vehicle retains its appeal as America’s favorite ride.

An American icon for more than a half century, the Packard Motor Car Co. designed and built some of the nation’s most sought-after luxury autos. Ferry will roll out a passel of Packards during the sale, ranging from a 1955 Packard Caribbean convertible that’s missing more than a few parts to a beautifully restored 1948 Packard Custom 8 creamy yellow convertible with a ready-to-run “Straight 8â€� engine with three-speed overdrive. The pack of Packards includes the last of the company’s limos

Article source: http://triblive.com/business/realestate/9031036-74/sept-sale-art

Dubbed the White 33 project for the numbers on its tail, this aircraft with combat history was recovered on an island in the Pacific. “This is a pretty iconic airplane, so this goes back to exacting standards,” said Klaers, who is also president and CEO of the neighboring National Museum of World War II Aviation and co-chairman of its board of directors.

“Exacting standards” is an apt description for any of the warbirds taking shape on the hangar floor. Some customers want to fly their World-War-II-era warbirds for another 60 years, Klaers said. His company tries to use as many of the original parts as it can; workers take the aircraft apart, straighten everything they can, and build the rest from scratch.

The capacity to build parts for these historic aircraft from scratch enables WestPac to restore a wide variety of World-War-II-era aircraft in exacting detail—the metal forming shop alone is almost capable of scratch-building a P-51 Mustang, Klaers said. But even the variations from a J to an L model of the P-38 preclude any sort of assembly-line-style efficiencies.

More than 10,000 P-38s, comprising 18 distinct models, were manufactured during World War II, according to Lockheed. Every model was a different variant, so one can’t use the same dyes in the metal forming shop, Klaers said.

“If you line them all up, they all look the same,” he said. “They’re not. … You’re really having to build each and every variant from scratch.”

Next door, the National Museum

Article source: http://www.aopa.org/News-and-Video/All-News/2015/September/17/WestPac

The slowed manufacturing rate for Boeing’s fading 747 jumbo jet has prompted a major supplier to cut its losses and exit the program.

Boeing said Thursday it has agreed to take over the work of building 747-8 fuselage panels from supplier Triumph Group.

Beginning in 2018, the huge aluminum-panel assemblies — the largest being 18 feet wide by 55 feet long — will be built at Boeing’s facility in Macon, Ga. That means the panels for the next Air Force One presidential plane may be made there.

The Macon site now only does military work, but that is ending next year.

Boeing will now transition Macon to become part of its fabrication division with a focus on building metal fuselages.

The company said it will invest approximately $80 million in employee training, tooling and building modifications at the facility over the next three years.

Triumph will also offload its other 747 structures work, including building the tail, floor beams and flight surfaces.

All that is “currently being competitively bid to selected suppliers,” Boeing said.

It expects to announce additional new sourcing decisions later this year.

The 747 fuselage panels have been made for many years in a Hawthorne, Calif., plant south of Los Angeles dedicated exclusively to 747 parts production.

Triumph acquired the plant when it bought Vought Aircraft in 2010. Vought had purchased the plant from original 747 supplier Northrop.

In January, after Boeing cut the 747-8 rate for the third time in less than two years — production is now at 16 jets per year, down from 24 jets

Article source: http://www.columbian.com/news/2015/sep/19/boeing-to-make-747-fuselage-parts-as-supplier-exits/

Stu MacPherson carefully turned the socket wrench, checking bolt after bolt, and gently wiped oil from the engine of his 1927 Travel Air biplane.

The brilliant blue and white plane basked in the sunshine for about five hours Saturday at Jabara Airport in northeast Wichita. It sat in a row with four other 1920s Travel Air planes that landed in Wichita after journeys from as far away as the West Coast.

MacPherson, a dentist from San Diego, made the trek with his wife as part of a fly-in and reunion marking the 90th anniversary of Travel Air company, which built airplanes in Wichita from the late 1920s to the early 1930s.

The MacPhersons flew their open-cockpit plane across nine states, starting in Oregon. They had to stay a day at one spot in Wyoming because the wind was too high. There is one little seat for the pilot and one slightly larger space for two passengers directly in front of the pilot.

What is it like to fly from an open cockpit with only a small windshield?

“The bikers say it’s like riding a Harley through the sky – it’s got a very free feeling to it,” MacPherson said.

As a young man, MacPherson became enthralled with the idea and sensations of flying and skydiving from a little plane designed to lift up on a short takeoff. MacPherson is 69 now; when he was 24, he parachuted out of the plane at 2,500 feet. He has owned it for 40 years.

The plane, a Travel Air 4000,

Article source: http://www.kansas.com/news/local/article35836569.html

In looking back to the 1956-1965 decade (before 1966) I rode motorbikes as a kid from 1956-’58 and motorcycles from 1959-on. My dad then bought a new 1961 Corvette in late 1960. What a fun time that was. We drag raced it during the summers of 1961-’63. My first real car that I bought was a 12,000-mile 1962 Impala SS 409 in late 1963. In 1960 and 1961, the fastest cars were modified, souped-up 1955-’60 283 and 348 Chevys, Corvettes, and Chevy-powered street rods. I indeed remember those days like they were yesterday. Today, you see new Camaros everywhere. Back then there were fast 348 Tri-power, four-speed Chevys seemingly on every corner and for sure in every Dog ’n Suds drive-in. I drag raced from 1959-up and worked at Nickey Chevrolet in Chicago when the Mark IV 396 came out in 1965 and the 427 in 1966.

The high-performance decade covering 1956-’65 was an historic wild time for sure. Chevrolet was number one in new car sales and tops in a plethora of Stock, Super/Stock, and Modified Eliminator drag racing classes.

The high-performance half-decade from 1966-’71 was no slouch either. The factories learned a lot from 1956-’65 and Stock Eliminator competition certainly ruled. But by the time 1965 and 1966 rolled around — not so much. I always thought I was probably the only guy on the planet who wondered what Chevy was quicker at the dragstrip: a ’62 409 or a ’66 427? To me, the difference

Article source: http://www.superchevy.com/features/1509-a-look-back-at-bow-tie-history-with-doug-marion/

“Cuando cambian los corazones, cambia la mirada, cambia la estancia, la nación”, said Winston Felipe Diaz Acosta, a teacher at the Havana Cathedral, another one of the pope’s stops.

Havana, Cuba (CNN)When Pope Francis lands in Cuba on Saturday he will find a changing country.

Scholas was founded by Pope Francis while he was still archbishop of Buenos Aires as an initiative to encourage social integration and the culture of encounter through technology, arts and sports.

“He should exert more pressure”, said Antonio Rodiles, head of the hardline group Estado de SATS. 27, will be the 24th time Cuba has marshaled worldwide support against the embargo but the first since Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro stunned the world last December by announcing they would seek to restore diplomatic ties and work to normalize relations.

Nevertheless, a warm reception awaits Francis when he follows in the footsteps of Pope John Paul’s ground-breaking 1998 visit and Pope Benedict’s 2012 trip.

They also likely will help facilitate U.S.travel to Cuba by authorizing airlines and ships to lease property and set up ticket offices on the island, and export airplane parts and other “airport safety equipment”, including screening equipment to service major carriers.

“It doesn’t make sense for us to keep sticking to the old ways of doing business”, the president said, referring to the embargo.

President Obama said much of the credit for the detente lay with the South American Pope.

The foreign minister said that

Article source: http://www.dispatchtimes.com/the-long-fraught-relationship-between-cuba-and-the-catholic-church/94456/