Musee de 24 Heures du Mans (24 Hours of Le Mans museum)

[indycals]

Here's a gallery of images from my visit to the Le Mans museum last week. Perhaps some good reference pics for some of you. Despite the fact that Porsche won Le Mans 19 times and there was a temporary "Porsche at Le Mans" exhibit, the museum was surprisingly devoid of Porsches - only one winner on-site, the 2017 winner. But a lot of other noteworthy cars, including one of my favorites, the Silk Cut Jaguar. Overall a very nice museum with thousands of model cars on display (mostly 1/43rds).

lightroom.adobe.com/shares/4df0a1af805d454ea69061517a1cb472

[flashman]

Terrific photos, Michael! Thanks for sharing them.

Just by accident, I discovered that you can zoom in on the photos by using the mouse to click somewhere in the photo. And the zoom effect will center on where the pointer was in the photo when you clicked, so you can zoom in on different areas of each photo! This is really nice for zooming in to see details of the cars, but is especially useful for zooming in on the group pics of the 1/43 car collections.

Note this worked using Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome browsers on my Windows10 PC at work. Can't wait to try it on my Mac at home.

Cameron

[robh]

Great photos! Thanks for sharing. Now where did I put that Matra kit....

[drums01]

HI Michael, Thanks for taking the time to share your photos with us all. It appears that the bullet train ride was well worth it (smile). Some day I hope I can make that trip too....

Ben

[billj]

Thank you very much for the excellent pictures. So many beautiful and historical cars. Wouldn't you love to take that Ferrari 250 GTO out for a few laps?

[johnwebster]

A few words about picture #10 (the airplane model).

On Dec. 17, 1903 the Wright brothers made four flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The longest was 850 feet and took just under a minute. In 1904 they rented a field near Dayton and set to work learning to fly. By the end of 1904 they were circling the farm and had made flights of an hour. By the end of 1905 their latest version of the Flyer sported a 25 hp upright inline four engine, two seats and improved stability. Then the Wrights quit flying while they waited for their patent to be approved and searched for customers.

In 1906 Alberto Santos-Dumont flew 1100 feet in a straight line in Paris. In 1907 Glenn Curtiss flew a mile in a straight line in New York. By the summer of 1908 a couple of European pilots had managed to fly wide, skidding circles and their flight times had risen to over a minute.

In 1908 Wilbur Wright arrived in France and began assembling the 1905 Flyer which had been shipped there in 1906. In a garage at Le Mans he uncrated the airplane and found that French customs had taken the machine out of it's crate and then roughly dumped it back in. That made the assembly take longer as did updating the control system to pitch, yaw and roll controls that were independent of one another as they were on the 1908 Flyer that Orville was taking to Washington to demonstrate for the Army. This was made more difficult by the fact that he did not speak French and the mechanics hired to assist him did not speak English. By August the Europeans were calling the Wrights "bluffeurs".

In the late afternoon of August 8, 1908 Wilbur had the Flyer mounted on it's launching rail and the catapult weight winched up it's tower. He started the engine and climbed aboard.

The weight dropped and the Flyer rolled along the rail and rose into the air. Attaining an altitude of 30 feet he flew three circuits of the field, making coordinated turns and then landed close to his launching point. He was in the air one minute and forty five seconds.

Ernest Archdeacon, one of the best European pilots was there. He turned to his companions and said "We are beaten, we are so badly beaten".

The model commemorates the first public flight of a heavier than air flying machine using the three axis control system still in use today.