The day after the Wasserkuppe visit, I picked up my parents at FRA airport and drove them to Heidelberg where my Dad’s clinic is located. Later that afternoon, my mom wanted to show me the little town nearby with nice pedestrian area that they discovered on a previous visit, so we left my dad to rest in the apartment and took off.
We were driving towards the town of Speyer when I noticed lot of little airplanes doing circuits over where we were going. As we were turning off the highway onto the road leading downtown, I noticed airplanes on the left – lots and lots of airplanes. Crossing three lanes of the road and making sharp turn towards the airplanes I discovered it was a place called Speyer Technik Museum. Before my mother had a chance to speak, I announced that we were going there and turned into the parking lot.
We got out of the car and immediately saw the little single engine airplane on a very low final approach going straight overhead. Figuring that the destination runway should be very close, I grabbed my cameras and went towards the field, jumping a few fences and crossing a road, followed by my mother who was starting to wonder if we’d get downtown at all that day.
We discovered a nice little GA airport with the café on site and free access to the side of the field that I could shoot from. It was the answer to the problem the bugged me about my Wasserkuppe visit – the only thing I did not do there was to shoot any flying – it just was not the best day for it. That little GA field with lot of activity was the perfect for shooting. Planes ranged from a conventional Cessna to some unfamiliar motogliders to strange looking ultra light contraptions. They offered 30 mins flights too, but converting 130 Euros into dollars per hour, I realized I did not quite want to go flying that badly.
I shot for a while, but eventually remembered I still had the whole open sky museum to see and so we made our way back. Getting closer to the airplanes on display, I realized there was a lot more to it than I initially thought and that I would have to practically run to see it all. My mother very smartly decided to sit on a bench and enjoy the sunny warm weather while I bought the ticket and started running from plane to plane, literally, as there were over a 100 of them. And then there were ships, automobiles, trains, u-boat and even a space ship.
Many years ago, visiting USAF museum in Dayton I was impressed by the numerous airplanes there, but there were lots of military airplanes that I did not know about and no GA or commercial airplanes. The Speyer museum had what I called an “idiot’s guide to airplanes” collection – it had famous airplanes, planes that everyone interested in aviation had heard of. It was aviation enthusiast and photographer's paradise as most of the collection was out in the open with the very good light (although some airplanes, including Royal Canadian AF Sabre jet, were in the hangar).
Walking through the museum, I could not help but wonder how in the world did they manage to put the Boeing 747 and Antonov 22 (largest airplane on Earth at the time) hundred feet about the ground. All larger planes had ladders leading to the inside, but I was too tired to even think of climbing and decided to save the insides for the next time.
The creators of the museum placed two Antonov airplanes right against each other – giant AN-22 with four propellers and much smaller single engine AN-2 bi-plane that was a workhorse of so many fleets in small regional airlines in Russia. That was an interesting contrast.
Another exhibition that I could really relate too was the fighter jets from many different countries, including those involved in aerobatic displays.
The final highlight was the real space shuttle – the Russian Buran. I saw one of the American shuttles on display at the Cape Canaveral museum, but this was the first time I saw the one from my homeland. Thinking about homeland, I looked at my watch, realized that my mom was sitting on a bench for over 3 hrs and it was getting dark, so I reluctantly made my way back to the entrance.
We never made it to downtown Speyer that day …
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