Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

Classics

2024 Wickenburg Fly-in
and Classic Car Show

Damsel and I attended the 29th Annual Wickenburg Fly-in and Classic Car Show at the local airport. We have gone to this event just about every year since we moved here 13 years ago. This one, in spite of not much sunshine and under mostly cloudy skies, was the largest we have seen to date in fly-in aircraft, classic cars and attendees. We had traffic jams both coming in and going out of the airport.

Since the show was an order of magnitude bigger this year, we only can post a few highlights here. Below are some photos of a few of the classic cars . . .

1958 Chevrolet Convertible w/Continental Kit:

1958 Edsel:

1955 Hudson(!) Metropolitan:

There were hundreds more.

And for the aviation part of the show (again just a small sample) . . .

Classic Stearman biplane (Boeing) with Continental seven cylinder radial engine:

An Army Blackhawk Helicopter flew in:

And, finally, a MTOSPORT Gyroplane:

That’s it for this post. There were so many great classic cars and aircraft that we took photos of and may post about some of those later.

21 Jan 2024 by Arizona Aviation Classics Notions

A 1947 Pontiac Woody
Station Wagon Anaglyph

This is a throwback to Saturday, November 08, 2008 when the Coast Guard Lighthouse at Point Vicente on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, Southwestern Los Angeles County, California held an open house. Damsel and I were attending the open house on a nice sunny November Day.

Other than the lighthouse and grounds tour, one gentleman drove his 1947 Pontiac Station Wagon (not a true “woody,” but with painted on planks) onto the lighthouse station as an exhibit. I used a little pocket camera, a Canon Powershot A510IS to take an image pair to later render into a 3D image.

You will need your red/cyan 3D glasses to view the above anaglyph image. If you don’t have a pair, then you can view the 2D version here.

The encounter with this old classic was very nostalgic for me since I learned to drive in a 1951 version of this car, a Pontiac wagon with a straight-eight engine which is the same type of engine that was in the classic wagon seen above.

25 Feb 2023 by Bob's 3D Stuff Classics Nostalgia

The 2023 Wickenburg
Fly-In and Car Show

Damsel and I attended the Fly-In on Saturday morning (01/21/23). This event Changed from October to January for unknown reasons, but regardless there were lots of people in attendance. There was so much traffic and cars that we wound up parked in the boonies several hundred yards out and had to walk into the airport proper.

There were hundreds of old and special cars and dozens of fly-in aircraft. Damsel and I took a lot of photos, but only four of the more interesting ones appear below. Click on any of the photos to enlarge.

1947 Consolidated Vultee L-13

This was the most interesting fly-in of the day. It is a 1947 Consolidated Vultee (now Convair) model L-13 fixed wing single engine. The Engine is a LYCOMING R680 Reciprocating Radial producing 215 Horsepower. The Weight is Less than 12,500lbs and the cruising speed is 92mph. As you can see from the photo above (courtesy Damsel), it was a very popular exhibit.

Shelby GT 500 KR

Shelby GT 500 KR. Some references to this muscle car show that these could produce 900 horsepower. That is a lot. This one was nice with blue racing stripes over light gray. Photo Courtesy Damsel.

Medevac Air Ambulance

This helicopter usually parks at the helipad next to our local Wickenburg Community Hospital. We often see it flying in and out of the area since our house is less than a mile south of the helipad. It is a 2004 Eurocopter (formerly Aérospatiale) AS-350B-3 single engine air ambulance configured helicopter. I spoke with one of the pilots who said they are “keeping busy” with routine and emergency transports.

1954 Chevrolet Bel Air Coupe

And finally, this very clean 1954 Chevrolet Bel Air Coupe was nostalgically reminiscent of the borrowed Chevy Bel Air Convertible I used to fetch my date to the Senior Prom in high school days (1961).

Damsel and I both had fun with our outing this year in spite of the crowds and parking situation. Our next outing will be “Gold Rush Days” in February. Stay tuned.

22 Jan 2023 by Aviation Classics Nostalgia

Kingman Express — Engine 3759

I took several images of Engine 3759 in Locomotive Park, across US Route 66 from the Kingman (Arizona) Powerhouse in December of 2009. I later combined two of the images to produce the anaglyph image above (clickable).

From Locomotive Wiki:

Santa Fe No. 3759 is a 4-8-4 “Northern” type steam locomotive built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1928 for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF).

This locomotive hauled passenger trains on the AT&SF. It was retired in the late 1950s when diesels replaced steam.

In February 1955, 3759 was brought out of retirement at the request of the Railway Club of Southern California for a special excursion run, dubbed “Farewell to Steam.” This special ran on February 6th, a round trip between Los Angeles Union Station and Barstow, CA with stops in Pasadena and San Bernardino and was the last Santa Fe revenue steam train to leave Los Angeles and to traverse Cajon Pass.

Santa Fe donated the locomotive to the city of Kingman in 1957. As of today, 3759 remains on static display at Locomotive Park in Kingman, AZ.

New Blog Category

Introducing the new Anaglyph Imagery category. It has been a long time interest of mine to view and later, produce, anaglyphic stereo imagery that requires red/cyan color filtered glasses to view.

If you don’t have a pair of red/cyan or red/blue 3D glasses, you can view the 2D image of Engine 3759 here. If you need a pair of 3D glasses, I recommend Rainbow Symphony. They only sell paper glasses in quantities of 50 and up unless you buy plastic glasses which you can get in a 2-pack. I see 3D glasses available on Amazon, but I don’t recommend them since I could not find origin sellers other than from China.

18 Sep 2022 by Bob's 3D Stuff Classics Nostalgia Notions

A New Route 66 Neon Sign

Damsel and I hung up this classic “Historic Route 66” neon sign in the garage today. This is the second one of these to hang in the garage. When the previous sign exhibited a “failure to function,” we recycled it and ordered a new one since the garage is quite dark and a “night light” of sorts is a good thing to have in there. Before we had the first Route 66 sign, we had a little Route 66 clock with a neon tube around it. I forget what happened to that one.

Speaking of classics, Damsel snapped the (clickable) photo below of a very nicely restored 1951 Chevrolet Panel Sedan. We were on our way home from delivering some dog food to the Humane Society, when we saw this nice ride coming toward us on Wickenburg Way.

19 Mar 2022 by Classics Nostalgia Retirement Wanderlust

Classic 1928 Ford Model A

I took my pickup truck in for service last Wednesday and decided to wait for it to be completed. When I got into the waiting area, I discovered the dealer had this very nice and new-looking 1928 Ford Model A on display in there. This classic was parked where we previously saw another classic Ford Stake Bed Truck parked in the same area.

The Model A looked as if it was fresh off the showroom floor, having been beautifully restored including the interior, the convertible top, rumble seat upholstery and all. The trunk (an actual trunk) looked new as well.

The truck I mentioned in the link in the first paragraph was also in pristine condition. My guess is that Mr. Jones, the local (Ford, Jeep, whatever) dealer, has quite the collection of vintage cars and trucks since we saw another old classic at their other location a few years back. I’m quite sure that Damsel took a photo of that one, but I couldn’t find it among the thousands of photos that we have in the archives.

11 Dec 2021 by Classics Nostalgia

A Classic 1955 Packard Clipper

1955-packard-clipper.jpg

Damsel took this photo of this classic 1955 Packard Clipper a little over a week ago. Neither of us remember seeing this car at any of the car shows or rallies that we have attended recently. The car appears to have the original paint job and when you click on the image to enlarge you may see some pitting on the hood (or maybe dead insects, I can’t tell). Besides that, the car looked very nice as the owners drove by along Wickenburg Way near the Maverik Gas station. You may notice our inflated local gas prices in the background which have gone up another $0.20 or so per gallon in the last week. Let’s Go Brandon!

Website Upgrade News

As I stated before, we have started the migration to the upgraded PHP and WordPress packages on our personal family site, VernaBob.com. The site is now running the new stuff and, as I feared, our old custom theme we used has some deprecated code and is incompatible with the new platform. As a result, I am using a stock WordPress theme and it will be that way until I can find the time to customize it. Some of the convenient features I used for posting are no longer available and I have to do a lot of the repetitive functions by hand rather than clicking a button.

So, I will be upgrading this website in the next few days and you can expect to see some major differences in the way the blog appears. I would appreciate any feedback you may have as to what you’re seeing and if anything is “broke.” I will try and get a “Stars and Stripes” theme going over the next few weeks, as time permits. Meanwhile, we will be functional with the new PHP and WordPress packages. This will be the last post under the old PHP and WordPress.

06 Nov 2021 by Classics Photography Retirement Technobabble

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