The balloon fiesta started great, beautiful weather for flying, great crowds and everyone happy, then rain, good rains I might add and then winds today which puts a damper on ballooning. Tomorrow is looking like more rain according to the weatherman. Soooooo, we don’t know how the end of the fiesta will play out.

B-17 Flying Fortress “Aluminum Overcast” is in town at the Double Eagle Airport, which is located out on my side of town and just a short drive from my place. I was in the yard when it flew over Tuesday. What a beautiful sight and a reminder of seeing them in my youth. I jumped in the car and beat it out to the air port hoping to get there in time for the landing. It was taxiing into the tarmac parking area when I arrived. As I was watching, another old timer joined me in watching the ground crew. We decided to go out and walk around the aircraft and see it from the ground. In talking to one of the EAA volunteer ground crew members he let us know as Veterans we could sign in and get a free tour of the aircraft. What a sweet deal that was. You remember watching film of the B-17 crews grabbing the top of the opening at the belly of the aircraft and kicking up their feet into the aircraft and slinking on up into the ship easy as pie….um-huh, no way…this old soul could barely get his head down over my fat belly to climb up the ladder, but I finally made it…I was looking right into the nose, the Bombardier  location and nose gunner….four could have flown in that location but I am not sure of the duties each would have had. I worked the optic bomb sight on the B-36 and some of the features were the same…On a bomb run, the plane was flown over the target by the bombardier but where the B-36 had a joy stick the B-17 has a control similar to the pilots. Up above the ladder and a little aft of the nose section was the pilot, copilot position and just behind them was the flight engineers. and it was in excellent shape and as expected, the pilots had over a jillion dials and gauges for them to study. A walk through the bomb bay, which this belly barely cleared the walkway and required a big sucking in of the old gut to make it, there was storage for about twenty 500 pounders by my count. Then you stepped into an area where present day passengers could ride and then the waist gunners positions. It seemed to me they would have been bumping into each other some in tracking the enemy planes. I had to put my hands on the guns and sight down the barrel trying to line up on a target. I don’t know how they ever hit anything but I guess they did.  I looked into the belly turret. The ground crew said the smallest man on the flight crew got the belly position and that he had to take off his parachute to get into the turret. Then if they were shot down, he had to line up the turret correctly with the aircraft, get out of the turret, put on his chute and make his way to the nearest exit, doing all this while the aircraft was probably in all manner of maneuvers while falling…geezs, who would want that job….I forgot to check out the tail gun position, but I am sure that was just as exciting as the belly gunner….Anyway, that was a wonderful experience for me. I hope you will check them out. They will be in Las Vegas NV Oct 12 – 13, Salt Lake City Oct 14 – 16, Denver Oct 21 – 23 Liberal, KS Oct 25 – 26 and Tulsa, Ok Oct 28 – 30…ground tours are $5.00 for one or 15 for a family, flights range from $399 to 465. Phone number for these guys is 800-359-6217 and e-mail b17reservations@eaa.org . This is some history you folks will not want to miss…