AviationTour??

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Tex_Mike

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Tex_MIKE
I will soon depart on a cross country driving trip from Texas to California (and back) and was wondering if there are any cool aviation tours that I would be able to take in.

Any aircraft factory tours etc. along the Western part of the country?
 
No idea if they still do it, but Dryden Flight Research Center used to give some really interesting public tours. You must arrange this in advance to get inside the air base. Do not take photos of the Air Force flight line unless you want to find out what the dirt smells like (NASA doesn't care, but it can be hard to know where the boundary is).

There are a ton of production facilities in the area (especially in Palmdale) -- the best known is Lockheed Skunk Works -- but most of the work is classified and there won't be any tours.

Are the Cessna and Garmin factories (in Kansas) too far out of the way?
 
The Pima Air Museum also has a tour of a missile silo, complete with missile.

Falcon Field in Mesa has a small CAF museum.

Valle airport near the Grand Canyon has part of the air museum from Chino, California (Planes of Fame). Visit Chino for the rest. Don't neglect the Grand Canyon, either. Skip up to fly over Lake Powell, and of course Zion and Bryce national parks. Have lunch in Kanab (UT).

San Diego has a nice air museum. It's not big, but it's well executed, with dioramas and a Gemini space capsule.

Skip up to McCLellan AFB (former) to see the Aerospace Museum of California,and to Castle AFB for the Castle Air Museum.

Afton, Wyoming has the Aviat factory; they're always friendly.

No trip out west would be complete without a trip to Boeing for a tour at Paine field, WA, or to the Museum of Flight at Boeing field (their restoration facility is at Paine).

Evergreen has a big display, including the Spruce Goose in their museum at McMinnville, OR.

Denver has the Wings over the Rockies museum.

Lots of places to visit.
 
MAKG1 said:
No idea if they still do it, but Dryden Flight Research Center used to give some really interesting public tours.
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I checked into the Dryden tour and, sadly enough, they no loner offer the tour due to budget cuts. I guess we didn't pay enough taxes last year.
 
X3 Skier said:
The Tucson area has two excellent places, AMARC (The Boneyard) http://www.amarcexperience.com/AMARCVGuide.asp and the Pima Air and Space Museum http://www.pimaair.org/

Either are worth a visit and even if you don't go inside the gates at AMARC the drive past is interesting. AMARC is next to Davis Monthan AFB and you might see A-10's in the area.

Cheers
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Couple of points to consider, however ---
The Titan Museum is about 25 miles south of Tucson on I-19 (not in Tucson itself)
Pima can easily take 2 days to go thru and docent tours are restricted during the summer period (due to the heat outside?)
AMARG is popular. If you don't sign up for the tour within 1/2 hour of the museum opening (0900), forget about getting on the tour that day (and leave bags and bulky items in your car -- don't allow them on base)
 
What part of California are you flying to? We have some really neat aviation museums.
 
DouglasBader said:
The Pima Air Museum also has a tour of a missile silo, complete with missile.

Falcon Field in Mesa has a small CAF museum.

Valle airport near the Grand Canyon has part of the air museum from Chino, California (Planes of Fame). Visit Chino for the rest. Don't neglect the Grand Canyon, either. Skip up to fly over Lake Powell, and of course Zion and Bryce national parks. Have lunch in Kanab (UT).

San Diego has a nice air museum. It's not big, but it's well executed, with dioramas and a Gemini space capsule.

Skip up to McCLellan AFB (former) to see the Aerospace Museum of California,and to Castle AFB for the Castle Air Museum.

Afton, Wyoming has the Aviat factory; they're always friendly.

No trip out west would be complete without a trip to Boeing for a tour at Paine field, WA, or to the Museum of Flight at Boeing field (their restoration facility is at Paine).

Evergreen has a big display, including the Spruce Goose in their museum at McMinnville, OR.

Denver has the Wings over the Rockies museum.

Lots of places to visit.
Click to expand...

Do you mean KMCC? I was just there for an all day event, formation flying, and if I had known there were other things there I would have planned my day around that. Shoot.
 
Tex_Mike said:
I checked into the Dryden tour and, sadly enough, they no loner offer the tour due to budget cuts. I guess we didn't pay enough taxes last year.
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More likely, some pencilneck in DC said "hey, that's not in your mission!" and cut the budget. Dryden has some very cool hardware. The Bell X-1A, SR-71 prototype, a really weird F-18 with a canard, and a replica of one of the X-15s (they crashed the real one) are all there. Less well known are a couple of lifting body prototypes (remember the accident from the Six Million Dollar Man opening -- that was one of them) and the LEM trainer.

That's a shame.

One thing you CAN see is the "mother ship" B-52 which is parked right outside the Edwards north gate off Hwy 58.

FYI, it's only tangentally related to aviation, but there is a very good atomic bomb museum (focusing on delivery systems) at the Sandia Lab in Albuquerque. They have a detailed exhibit on nuclear weapons accidents, including one of the casings recovered from the Mediterranean off the coast of Spain. With a really nasty dent in the front.
 
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