Below you will find some more photos from my June 6th trip to Planes of Fame. As most of you know, the Zero at Planes of Fame is the only 100% real Zero left in the world. There are several airframes still flying, but none with their original engines. It is truly a beautiful aircraft. One note about the photos. This aircraft has probably been photographed more than any in the world, so it's hard to get photos that aren't available elsewhere. So, what I did was to simply take the photos of the items that I had questions about when I was building my Zeros. Enjoy!
I received the following from Steve Hinton (one of the main guys at Planes of Fame) about the Planes of Fame Zero:
Our Planes of Fame Zero was completely restored from 1975 to 1978. We disassembled and overhauled the engine, replaced the wing spars added a few changes to the machine to make it more friendly to fly and re-assembled the aircraft for flight. We took it to Japan and flew it for 4 months at several airshow type events. Since that time the aircraft has participated in many museum functions and a few motion pictures. In 1995 we took it again to Japan and flew it alongside a P-51 for 3 airshows. We have recently repainted the Zero. We have flown the Zero almost 400 hours and it runs great. This year alone we flew it about 75 hours. It has a very reliable engine.
Steve Hinton
Photos by Dave Pluth
For further information on Planes of Fame you can visit their website at www.planesoffame.org