Champaign Aviation Museum *PICS*

Shay · **Posted:** Mon Dec 14, 2009 7:55 pm

Future home of Champaign Lady. She'll be in good company. Do yourself a favor and make some time to visit this museum. Friendly people and you can get up close and see some beautiful machines.

Open the floodgates

http://s50.photobucket.com/albums/f321/ChimChim3/Champagne%20Aviation%20Museum/?start=all

Hopefully she'll be ready in time for the Reunion

A little bit of Local Heritage..

My opinion on the new Museum? I Dig It!!

Shay
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Semper Fortis

CAPFlyer · **Posted:** Mon Dec 14, 2009 9:51 pm

I'm glad to see that 105CA found a good home. She sat at Columbus for years still in Desert's ownership, but in Air Tahoma's care. When I was at HMA the mechanics did some basic checks on it periodically, so she was still in basically airworthy shape. When Bud sold Desert N153PA, my understanding was that the DC-3 was "sold" to Air Tahoma as part of the transaction. With the shutdown of HMA, I was hoping at least a few of their birds, if they didn't find homes flying revenue, they'd find some good museums as several of the aircraft are very deserving (the CV-240s are all T-29s or VC-131s) and one of the CV-580s is C/N 7.

Shay · **Posted:** Mon Dec 14, 2009 10:23 pm

CAPFlyer wrote:

I'm glad to see that 105CA found a good home. She sat at Columbus for years still in Desert's ownership, but in Air Tahoma's care. When I was at HMA the mechanics did some basic checks on it periodically, so she was still in basically airworthy shape. When Bud sold Desert N153PA, my understanding was that the DC-3 was "sold" to Air Tahoma as part of the transaction. With the shutdown of HMA, I was hoping at least a few of their birds, if they didn't find homes flying revenue, they'd find some good museums as several of the aircraft are very deserving (the CV-240s are all T-29s or VC-131s) and one of the CV-580s is C/N 7.

I really like this C-47. I look forward to her turn at restoration. You can still see the remnant outline of the Stars and Bars on her wing panels. As I understand it this C-47's ferry flight down from Columbus was nothing short of epic.

More of it's background:

Shay
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Semper Fortis

Shay · **Posted:** Mon Dec 14, 2009 10:44 pm

Neat pictures for comparison. One taken this past Saturday the other taken in October 1942.

http://www.shorpy.com/node/1811?size=_original

Shay
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Semper Fortis

Pat Carry · **Posted:** Tue Dec 15, 2009 11:13 am

Nice set of photos, thanks for sharing. I guess I had not realized the museum had acquired this many aircraft.

Holedigger · **Posted:** Tue Dec 15, 2009 12:43 pm

Nice collection! It is also good to see all those red pipes up in the rafters..FOAM or just water?....must learn hard lessons from other's hangar fires.

Hopefully it helps with the insurance rates as well. Really hate it when entire collections go up in smoke.

bdk · **Joined:** Sun May 02, 2004 1:16 am **Posts:** 11324

As someone from Illinois, I urge you to check your spelling!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champaign,_Illinois

b17warbirdguru · **Joined:** Wed Oct 31, 2007 7:39 pm **Posts:** 28

Pat Carry wrote:

Nice set of photos, thanks for sharing. I guess I had not realized the museum had acquired this many aircraft.

It is my understanding that a few of these aircraft are not entirely part of the "collection", but rather are temporarily being housed in the extra hangar space.