Day 58 - Eugene and McMinnville

Tony Cacciarelli • August 11, 2020

Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum

- August 11, 2019

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The Spruce Goose

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Spirit of St. Louis replica

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Spruce Goose interior

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Who would've thought I'd see this

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Another SeaBee

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Nice Catalina, too

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Another SR-71.
Seems like every aviation museum has one

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Original Instagram Post

Making the most of the time here in Eugene. I drove 90 minutes up to McMinnville and the Aviation and Space museum. They have this little plane nicknamed the Spruce Goose there (turns out it’s actually made mostly out of birch). Here are some fun facts that came out of a text conversation I had with my father.

The Spruce Goose has 8 Pratt & Whitney R-4360 "Wasp Major" radial engines. Each engine has 28 cylinders and burns 195 gal/hr. So, multiple that by 8 engines and you get a fuel burn rate of...1560 gal/hr!

Takeoff speed was about 90 mph, and the aircraft had a single flight of about a mile - which would take it roughly 40 seconds. That'd be about 18 gallons to do one mile which works out to about .05 mpg. Not exactly the epitome of efficiency, but that wasn't the style at the time. It was about brute-force engineering and throwing as much as you could at a problem.

Anyway, it's a great museum with lots of exhibits and a whole building dedicated to space exploration. Interesting to compare this with the Museum of Flight in Seattle. Not better or worse, just different.

As I was walking by one area, a particular model caught my eye and I realized it was an RC version of the ICON A5! They had an amazing variety of stuff to look at - too much to go into details. If you ever find yourself in the area, definitely check it out.

No progress on my tire issue today, but I'll pick that up tomorrow and start getting it dealt with.

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This was a nice, leisurely day. I didn't have anywhere to be and there was nothing I could do to move the tire fix along. So, I took my time going through the museums and chose the scenic route back to Eugene. Between the Boeing museum and this I was definitely getting a good dose of aviation history on the back half of the trip.

The Spruce Goose is an absolutely massive aircraft. Pretty much the entire rest of the museum lives under its wings and fuselage. It was impressive and ridiculous at the same time.

I regularly fly around the Port of Los Angeles and the spot where the Spruce Goose lived for many years before moving to the Evergreen museum. It was an engineering feat just to make the move. They obviously couldn't fly it up there, so it had to be moved by barge and trucks.

The museum does a really good job of showing off all the aircraft, letting you get up pretty close, and providing plenty of history and information. I'd recommend it for anyone who has an interest in this sort of stuff.