As I said in the introduction to this post, I've been a mild aviation buff since I was a kid. So it was a real treat for me to wander among these unusual aircraft, and inspect them from close up. We had arrived onsite around 10:00, well before the general public was admitted at noon, and more planes were still arriving, positioning themselves in two rows along the airport's taxiway. These are some of the more interesting ones.

Photo 11: An absolutely pristine and gorgeous Cessna 182P floatplane built in 1973.

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Photo 13: A most unconventional Rutan Long EZ. Burt Rutan is an innovative engineer designer who made his name designing unusual looking single- and 2- seat private planes available in kit form for their owners to assemble. His designs eschewed the usual convention of propellor and wings in the front and tail in the back. The Long EZ was one of his first and most successful creations, featuring a "canard" (horizontal stabilizer and rudder in front) layout, a pusher propellor in the rear, and vertical stabilizers and rudders at the tips of the swept-back wings. The unusual attitude of the nose resting on the ground is to preserve the proper balance of the craft in flight. When the pilot gets in the cockpit, his weight aft of the landing gear will pivot the plane into its normal attitude with the tail wheel on the ground, and the nose pointing up.

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Photo 16: A plain old ordinary Cessna 140, one of the most successful and long-lived private planes, this particular one built in1946. How many 78 year old cars do you know that are still on the road in everyday service?

Photo 17:Citabria. Another successful long-lived private plane, this one built in 1976. One small difference from the Cessna, with a clue to the difference in its name. "Citabria" is "Airbatic" spelled backwards.

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Photo 19: Grumman TBF Avenger. This is a World War II carrier-based torpedo plane. It was known as being highly unsuccessful at the Battle of Midway in 1942, where the entire flight of them was shot down by anti-aircraft fire from the Japanese carriers, leaving only one survivor floating in the water. However they did serve to divert that anti-aircraft fire, leaving the carriers vulnerable to the following American dive bombers, which succeeded in sinking three of the four carriers. This particular example was built in 1945.

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Photo 22: Vision Jet. A very snazzy corporate jet. Very fast, very loud, and noted for its particularly large "vee" tail.

Photo 23: Diamond DA 40 sailplane (glider) built in 2007