Aviation Museum

The company Brian works for (The Woodard Group) has built a museum and hangers for someone who privately owns one of the most impressive collections of planes in the world. Brian has personally only been involved with building the WWI hanger, which houses bi and tri planes for WWI, almost every single one of them is operational! The hanger is 3 bays long and is post and beam. Since he's had experience with that type of construction, he was involved in the design/planning stages, and subcontractors did the actual work.

Currently they are building a German hanger...a Superintendent from The Woodard Group traveled to Germany to escort back the steel from an original WWII hanger that was bombed. They are replicating the structure almost exactly, using all/as much of the original steel as they can (it's been re "something'ed", so it's all safe:-). A few changes have to be made to consider the hurricane/high wind situation in VA.

Anyway, this is the weekend of the air show! We had fun looking at all the planes, and watching them fly! Here is a link to all the planes. Of course they are VERY loud, and the whole thing was very impressive. The runway is grass, and Brian said they tested it out by driving a suburban 70mph with a person on the back bumper. If it was too bumpy, it was graded some more. Crazy!

I didn't take as many pics as I should have. I got distracted and forgot! We invited some friends to go along, and even ate a steak dinner there. It was a nice day, and really perfect weather!

I think this was the Corsair

This one, whatever it is, is the first passenger/commercial plane ever (seats 6 + pilot). It is one of only 3 that are operational in the world.

A line up of planes getting ready to fly for us. The take off and landing strip is on the grass behind the planes.

A display

They also had people in full WWII war costume, and shot some HUGE guns (75mm or something? LOUD).

I really should have taken more pics. Maybe next year! It was a very enjoyable day!