[HN Gopher] One man's quest to restore the first-ever Air Force One
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One man's quest to restore the first-ever Air Force One
Author : rmason
Score : 35 points
Date : 2024-08-15 21:04 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| tocs3 wrote:
| A beautiful plane.It is to bad they are not flown anymore. Glad
| to see someone caring for a piece of history.
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| I'm just relieved this wasn't a post about sneakers but if it was
| I hoped for the best. This is a topic I never really ever thought
| about to be honest. If I were pressed to answer I'd assume the
| first was FDR or Truman. The US presidency (and govt) gets really
| weird and interesting right after WW2, this feels like an
| artifact to that point. Shame I can't find any interior shots
| online, I'm curious to see a photograph that matches the first
| paragraph of the post ...
| BadHumans wrote:
| I really wanted this to be about the sneaker.
| w-m wrote:
| You can step inside the first jet-powered Air Force One in the
| Museum of Flight in Seattle. It's fully stocked, with meeting
| rooms and communication equipment and all. My favorite part is
| the fake temperature control:
|
| > President Johnson was finicky about room temperature and when
| he was VP and developed a habit of haranguing the flight crew
| about lowering or raising the cabin temperature. After a while
| the crew got tired of his shenanigans, so they installed a "fake"
| temperature control in the Conference Room. This appeasement was
| successful, and Johnson was so pleased with manipulating the
| controls himself that he didn't even notice when the temperature
| remained the same.
|
| https://blog.museumofflight.org/quirks-of-the-first-jet-powe...
| rtkwe wrote:
| The Airforce Museum in Ohio also has a few different early Air
| Force Ones including at least one you can walk through.
|
| https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Pres...
| whartung wrote:
| Ronald Reagan Presidential Library has the last 707 model. Just
| as an exhibit, and the hoops they had to jump through to
| install the plane, are remarkable all in themselves.
| netsharc wrote:
| It reads like it's the Airplane of Theseus...
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| That's pretty much the difference between restoration and
| conservation.
|
| It's not about conserving the original parts (though often
| people restoring something will do that as much as possible)
| it's about restoring it to what it would have looked like or
| how it would have worked originally.
|
| Both conservation and restoration are important parts of
| appreciating history.
| bankcust08385 wrote:
| Yesterday, I learned most all outdated presidential limos are
| destroyed and so aren't present in any museum.
| w-m wrote:
| Oh, really? I guess here goes my second presidential
| transportation museum fact of this thread then: you can visit a
| limousine used by Truman in the Little White House in Key West:
| https://fla-keys.com/news/article/10941/key-west-visitors-ca...
|
| To me it seemed just like any older car, not anything special.
| Didn't realize they are destroying most of them.
| h4x0rr wrote:
| I thought it was the Nike shoes lol
| k4rli wrote:
| Reddit quality comments...
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Is the intention to keep it flying for VIP tours? Why not just
| focus on the cosmetics instead of the costly real maintenance
| work? When I see a museum WW2 or older vehicle, I assume the
| thing can no longer run.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| There is a museum near me that does the required maintenance on
| some of the planes they have to keep them in theoretical
| working condition. I like that I am looking at "real" planes,
| not just empty shells with the guts ripped out or decayed.
| Maybe one day they will actually be flown.
|
| Much easier to restore fully in the future if they are
| maintained now.
| miketery wrote:
| There's a difference between not flyable, flyable but not
| certified, fly able and certified. Each step is a big cost
| difference. But many hobbyist can get from one to two depending
| on the tech used.
|
| If I recall correctly there's a guy putting Honda engines
| inside Cessnas making them much cheaper. But they are not
| certifiable.
| darzu wrote:
| Damn, I wish they had filmed this restoration and put it all on
| YouTube, that would have been an incredible channel. Like Tally
| Ho[0] but for a plane.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/@SampsonBoatCo
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| I love this aircraft! It was an amazingly advanced aircraft for
| its time, which is perhaps not surprising when one discovers that
| no other than Howard Hughes' TWA funded its development.
|
| I can highly recommend the book by Ken Wixey (ISBN
| 978-0752417660) for a history of both the military and civilian
| variants; it starts with the Lockheed company's beginnings after
| the Great War and goes all the way to the Lockheed Starliner (the
| final variant of the Constellation). Suffice it to say that the
| model was significantly more reliable than a certain other
| vehicle with the same name!
|
| Also, there's a Super Constellation that you can fly in the
| FlightGear simulator[1], which is remarkably accurate (and, dare
| I say, a big challenge to fly).
|
| [1]: https://wiki.flightgear.org/Lockheed_Constellation
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