Caption Contest #44 Winner - The Old Greased Footplates Trick...

 Twitter follower @bradkoehn has done it again... he came out on top in the Caption Contest poll to earn another bacon sandwich at Oshkosh 2011 - congrats!

 And how about that crazy pic? It's real to be sure. The flying platform is the HZ-1 Aerocycle developed by de Lackner Helicopters for the U.S. Army in the mid 50's. The counter rotating rotors offset the torque and the pilot simply leaned in the direction he wanted to go. I guess you could say the idea worked better than you'd probably imagine... however, it also had some serious problems. Originally it had been intended to be flown by untrained (non pilot) soldiers, but it turned out to be a little more difficult than that. Far worse, two accidents occurred where the rotors made contact with each other and the blades shattered. There's no good ending to that scenario.

 If you look at the distance between the two sets of blades, directly under the pilot's feet, you'll see that it has far less separation than most of the other coaxial configurations. Check out the picture of the DASH unmanned coaxial helicopter I posted recently for comparison.

 Only one HZ-1 exists today - it's at the U.S. Army Transportation Museum at Fort Eustis, Newport News, Virginia. I can see from checking out the museum website that this would make a great place to stop at someday as they have several other extremely unique flying machines. Here's a nice flickr pic of the HZ-1 on display at the museum (even the mannequin looks worried!)

 The post WWII era running thru til the late 60's was an amazing aviation time period. With almost any idea you can imagine being tried to see what really worked and what didn't. It didn't hurt that there seemed to be all the cash you could need to give every idea a try as well. I'm guessing those days are gone forever...

Caption Contest #43 - A 'Brake Lock' Winner!

 Congrats to 'seerjfly', a repeat offender in the Caption Contest! There'll be more than one bacon sandwich to collect at Oshkosh 2011 for this captioning excellence... I hope OSH11 is in your summer avgeek plans for next year.

 The 'heels on the floor' idea is a great one, but I was really pulling for the Shuttle dragster/wheelie concept here. No worries tho, it's all just so we can have some fun with pix of flying machines. Thanx again to all who tossed a caption in the ring, and to all who voted.

 Watch next Monday morning for another chance to win a hot, sizzling, Oshkosh bacon sandwich : )

Caption Contest #42 - Bow Down To The Winner

 When Caption Contest #42 came to a full stop, twitter follower @Willhamrick had earned himself a delectable bacon sandwich at OSH11 - great job Will! I don't have any details on this unusual DC-3 situation, but it looks like the damage was minimal (at least to the airplane, the ego, I'm not so sure about)

 Thanx again to everyone who submitted caption ideas and to all who voted. Keep watch next Monday as a new chance may be up, but I may leave the contest in the hangar for a week instead, you just never know. Either way, more avgeek caption fun will be coming your way before long : )

Caption Contest #41 Winner(s) - Goblin Revenge

 Ok, here's the deal. The airplane in the pic is the Douglas XF-85 'Goblin' (goblin: noun- a grotesque sprite or elf that is mischievous or malicious toward people), and I think this time around, the goblins were really working against us. Some real life people were acting like goblins Friday night when squarespace.com (the platform that AirPigz is built on) was maliciously attacked bringing down thousands of websites. The downtime knocked out the last 3 or 4 hours of voting, but since things were back up by about 10pm, I decided to extend voting til midnight. And, in the last 2 hours of voting, the second caption shown here caught up with the first and we wound up with another tie.

 Instead of having a tie-breaker poll tho, I figured both of these captions deserve a bacon sandwich at OSH11 for having to deal with the mayhem. So congrats to twitter followers @bradkoehn for the top caption, which just might be the most words ever in a winning caption... and to @jimway for the lower one, which I'm pretty sure is the fewest words ever in a winning caption. And as always, thanx to everyone who submitted a caption... it wouldn't be a contest without you!

 There's gonna be a lot of bacon flying around at my campsite in Camp Scholler at Oshkosh 2011, so it's a good thing I've already started drawing up plans for a super swine sizzler! And remember, the bacon sandwiches are specifically for AirPigz game winners, but there will be free bacon strips available to anyone who wants to stop by and chew the fat : ) Details on the days and times for the official AirPigz bacon parties at OSH11 will be posted in July, but you need to make plans to be at OSH11 right now! Oshkosh 2011: July 25-31.

Caption Contest #40 Winner - DC-3 McDouble?

 

 If it looks like you're seeing mc'double', you are. We wound up with a tie in the original round of Caption Contest voting that ended on Friday evening. So early in the morning on Saturday, right before I departed for a 4 hour drive to Cedar Point for some rollercoaster induced smilage, I put up a tie-breaker poll to finally get the winner picked. After a full day of rollercoasters, chilly air, and my first ever ride on the maXair (review coming before long), I left America's Roller Coast at 10:15 pm and wound up checking the poll results while on the drive back home, I was very surprised to see that the tie-breaker had ended at midnight in a tie!

 I decided we'd just have to make them both a winner this time around. Congrats to 'seerjfly' for the top caption, and to 'TTurley' for the bottom caption. You'll each get a bacon sandwich if you can make it to Oshkosh 2011... or should I call them an AirPigz McBacon Deluxe? : )

 Lastly, due to the tie, and to my extreme Cedar Point fatigue (from acting liking a hyper 16 year old in a 49 year old body), we're gonna skip the Caption Contest this week and set our sights on next week. Cheers.

Caption Contest #39 Winner - Fiscal Responsibility?

 It was a real barn-burner of a competition in the poll for the caption winner, but the gem above from 'Tailgear' jumped out in front on the second day of voting and never looked back. It was actually a 3-way tie for second place, but only the winner will snag a bacon sandwich at Oshkosh 2011! Congrats to Tailgear for the win.

 I was unable to find details on this slick little non-flying F-35 caricature other than it seems to be somewhere in Europe and it's obviously very well done. Unfortunately, this caption is a reminder of the troubled nature of the F-35 project. I was really hoping we'd see this one come in on time and maybe even under budget. I know a project like this has to be insanely complicated, but at this time in our history, we desperately needed to get it done right.

 I think we need Scaled Composites (or a similar mindset company) to get in on designing and building fighter aircraft... you know, before it's too late.

Caption Contest #38 Winner - Yoda Speaks

 The captioner known as Race 5 has done it again... two in a row now! They've earned another bacon sandwich at OSH11 with this short, sweet, and to the point caption about Yoda's response to this X-wing mishap. And, to answer seerjfly's question about where do I find these pictures... it just takes tenacious, relentless web searching and a slightly twisted mind to generate the right search terms. There's a lot of crazy stuff out there!

 I wish I knew who created this image as they've done a fabulous job. I'm getting fairly good with photoshop myself these days, so hopefully I'll be able to start up my own collection of bizarre aviation images before long. Anyway, thanx again to everyone who submitted captions, and to all who voted. Watch for more of this harmless avgeekery as we try to snag a wire next Monday morning : )

Caption Contest #37 Winner - Meet The Family...

 A last minute submission before the deadline has wound up as the big winner in Caption Contest #37... congrats go out to a new player identified as Race 5 for what is probably the shortest caption yet. And, while I'm personally no fan of movies that are foul on the humor, I can't argue that this caption was a perfect fit for the picture.

 I sure hope Race 5 has plans to be at Oshkosh 2011 to claim the winner's bacon sandwich during an official AirPigz bacon aromatherapy session! There are two things that should always be in the air at Oshkosh... airplanes, and the smell of bacon : )

 BTW, having the voting on both Thursday and Friday seemed to work really well, so you can expect to see that in every game now. Watch for more Caption Contest fun coming next Monday.

Caption Contest #36 Winner - Opposites Attract!

 Matt Everett from LeavingTerraFirma.com is the winner of Caption Contest #36 - nice job Matt! This certainly was an odd and intriguing picture of an A-12 model mounted on a stick for radar testing. The A-12 wikipedia entry has another pic of the model, but the one I used just happened to have that Jeep in just the right spot : )

 If Matt makes it to Oshkosh 2011, he'll have a tasty 'bacon sandwich' to collect for his winning effort. Your chance could be next... watch for another Caption Contest coming this next Monday (unless I forget!)

Caption Contest #35 Winner - Not So Fast Mister!

 The winner of the new and improved Caption Contest has been crowned!  It was pretty hard to beat the humor in the caption from LIPOPILOT, great job! Hopefully he's got plans to be at Oshkosh 2011, cuz that's where his winner's 'bacon sandwich' will be presented. (mmm, bacon : )

 This pic certainly has to rank right up there on the what-were-they-thinking scale. Crazy stuff indeed... it would sure be interesting to know what the point was to all of this. And I sure hope the girls survived it all ok.

 Watch for another Caption Contest to start next Monday, and for some fab Reno Air Races coverage starting later tonight with some pix from the event on today, Friday, September 17, 2010.