billtate wrote:
It took me a while to dig these out of my files but I though you all might like to see the Southern Museum of Flight's Fokker D.VII. I know very little about the aircraft, but I seem to remember that there are some original parts and it is not a 100% replica. I also remember that the aircraft had some kind of connection to Glenn Edmund Messer, who founded an airport in the Birmingham, AL area.
It is one of the Blue Max replicas, and is a non-flyer today. I worked at the SMF from 1998 - 2003 (at which time I got uppity and decided to go full time with my art), and had the privilege of watching it being restored over that time period. The engine is a build up meant only to hold the prop in place. The machine guns and visible engine parts were beautifully fabricated out of wood by museum craftsmen. The lozenge scheme was painted on this aircraft. I forget if commercially-available printed lozenge fabric was an option on this aircraft during restoration, but maybe cost was a factor ...
Interestingly, the logs are in the museum collections (I was the collections manager), and we found out that during the filming this airframe was flown 7-8 times by author/pilot Richard Bach.
Glenn Messer was one of those pioneer aviators you never heard of, but he did everything from wing-walking to parachuting to barnstorming back in 'the day'. He's a legend in Birmingham/southern region and among the 'old-school' US aviators who ALL knew him. You should see his collections and scrapbooks!! He was an inventor as well, and if memory serves, he made a small fortune as the inventor of the floor-click headlight dimmer we all used to have. During my SMF tenure I was constantly amazed by Messer's contributions to early aviation as I went through the files. He founded the museum and served as it's director for many years. It was a tough decision to leave a great job at the SMF, but between job, family, and art, something had to give, and "art" was giving too much, IMHO!
Wade