US Army Air Forces

[ehowton]

USAF Aircraft Insignia Roundel


Kansas has some laws which seem entirely foreign to me. Such as its illegal to pull-through an open parking space. Or back your vehicle into an open parking space. One year at Airbus the Wichita police rolled through and issued citations to everyone but me. I didn't get a ticket because I have a front license plate. In Kansas, front plates are either optional, or they simply do not issue them - I don't know which.

So I went vanity plate shopping, hoping to find something appropriate to fill the void on the Land Yacht and settled on something I hoped would reflect not only my own military history, but that of Bill's as well, as a WWII bombardier onboard B-26 Marauders (which coincidentally is the name of the high-performance variant of the Grand Marquis).

Only afterward did I decide I wanted to shoot this with aircraft in the background. The Newton City Airport (EWK) is rather tiny, but I thought I might have some luck there. As it turns out, there was a bit of an air show so the "crowds" would preclude any creative parking. As I was circling back around I stopped to introduce myself to a man who was working on his Raytheon-built 1962 Bonanza and asked if I could use his aircraft as a backdrop. I helped him pull it out of the hanger because he thought it would make a better a picture :)

Comments

[slchurchman.livejournal.com]

Wow! Impressive! Can you show this to Bill?

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

Glad you think so! And yes ma'am, that's the idea :)

[michelle1963.livejournal.com]

How cool is that! :-) Now that's a Land Yacht with both some history and some flair.

Very nice man to pull his plane out for your shot.

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

I thought so! The guy with the plane was quite friendly and accommodating.

[michelle1963.livejournal.com]

Seems from talking to Grandpa that "plane" guys are ecstatic to share their love of planes any way they can.

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

That was my assumption in approaching the gentleman - that he would be more than happy. Kinda like the time I wanted to spike a goat's head to photograph. (http://ehowton.livejournal.com/330216.html) I was worried that the guy I asked would think I was weird. Thankfully his reply was, "No, that's totally awesome - I don't know why I don't think of these things." But in like, reverse.