Paul Allen's Flying Heritage Collection

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen knows what to do with his wealth:


http://www.flyingheritage.com/
The planes within the Flying Heritage Collection were created at a
time when aeronautical discovery had evolved to aviation mastery.
Finely crafted by distinguished design bureaus with leading
technologies of the 1930s and 1940s, the main emphasis of the
collection includes combat aircraft from World War II.

Examples include U.S., British, German, Russian and Japanese
types, which were often pitted against each other in great air
battles. These rare survivors were researched, hunted down and
sometimes recovered from former battlegrounds and airfields. While
a few specimens were rebuilt by previous owners, the majority on
display have received restoration of the highest authenticity.

In 1998, Paul G. Allen began acquiring and preserving these iconic
warriors and workhorses, many of which are the last of their kind.
Allen's passion for aviation and history, and his awareness of the
increasing rarity of original WWII aircraft, motivated him to
restore these artifacts to the highest standard of authenticity
and share them with the public.

While the education they provide is significant, we hope you take
special pleasure in knowing that these historic aircraft are not
meant simply for display in a static museum environment. As part
of the Flying Heritage Collection, their destiny is to return once
more to the sky, where they were always meant to be.

Join us each summer when various planes from the Flying Heritage
Collection are flown to keep them operational and exercised on a
regular basis. History buffs and aviation enthusiasts can witness
the beauty and mechanical precision of these vintage aircraft as
they are returned to the skies!

A viewing area is available at the west end of 109th St. SW, just
a short walk from the collection's hangar. Limited seating is
available, but we also encourage visitors to bring lawn chairs and
picnics to enjoy the thrilling flights, which typically last for
an hour. Fly Day viewing is free to the public, but does not
include admission to the Flying Heritage Collection.

2008 Fly Days
JUNE 14 and 28
JULY 12 and 26
AUGUST 9, 23 and 30
SEPTEMBER 13 and 27
OCTOBER 11

Current Collection:
Curtiss JN-4D Jenny
Curtiss P-40C Tomahawk
Fieseler Fi 156-C2 Storch
Focke-Wulf Fw 190D-13 Dora
Grumman F6F Hellcat
Hawker Hurricane Mk.XIIb
Messerschmitt 163B Komet
Messerschmitt Bf 109E-3 Emil
Mitsubishi A6M3-22 Zero-Sen
Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa Oscar
North American P-51D Mustang
Polikarpov I-16 Type 24 Rata
Polikarpov U-2/PO-2
Republic P-47D Thunderbolt
Supermarine Spitfire Mk.Vc

V-1 Vergeltungswaffe (German for vengeance weapon)
FIESELER FI 103R REICHENBERG piloted V-1
The Soviet Army occupied the Nordhausen area and in 1948 they
demolished the entrances to the underground missile factories.
Almost half a century later, a new entrance was found into the
caves and these missiles were discovered there.

http://www.flyingheritage.com/Templa...x?contentId=37
Sign up for the FHC newsletter and receive collection updates and
information about Fly Days and other special events.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Allen
Paul Gardner Allen (born January 21, 1953) is an American
entrepreneur who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates. Allen
regularly appears on lists of the richest people in the world. As
of September 2007, Forbes ranks him as the eleventh richest
American, worth an estimated $16.8 billion....

Allen has donated US$900 million of his money, as of 2007....

Allen has also funded the purchase of many Jimi Hendrix artifacts,
including the guitar Hendrix played at Woodstock...

Allen has made several investments since becoming a billionaire.
He confirmed that he was the sole investor behind Burt Rutan's
Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne suborbital commercial spacecraft
on October 4, 2004. SpaceShipOne climbed to an altitude of 377,591
feet (115,090 m) and was the first privately funded effort to
successfully put a civilian in suborbital space. It won the Ansari
X PRIZE competition and received the $10 million prize....



http://www.pgafoundations.com/
The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation was established in 1986 to
administer most of his contributions.[13] Through the Foundation,
Allen awards approximately $30 million in grants annually.



http://www.paulallen.com/?contentId=1
What should exist?

To me, that's the most exciting question imaginable. What do we
need that we don't have?



http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/...cspace10.shtml
Allen funding sustains SETI

By TOM PAULSON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The search for extraterrestrial intelligent life could have come
to a grinding halt years ago without Paul Allen's steadfast
philanthropic support, according to a leader of the ambitious --
and occasionally controversial -- enterprise.

"Mr. Allen has always believed this is an important project," said
Jill Tartar, director of research for SETI (Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence). ...

The so-called Allen telescope will actually be 350 small, 20-foot
telescopes randomly spread across the arid landscape near Mount
Lassen. The approach is referred to as a "massively parallel
array" and represents a new strategy in radio astronomy.

Many astronomers regard it as a critical first step toward a
project known as the Square Kilometer Array, a similar but much
larger array of radio telescopes aimed at expanding on a proven
technology. ...

When NASA stopped funding the SETI project in the early '90s,
Sullivan said, Allen stepped in with money to keep it alive.



Allen Telescope Array
http://www.seti.org/ata/
The total cost of the project to date, including research,
development and construction costs for the array and the necessary
radio astronomy and SETI signal detectors, is $50 million. The
first phase of this project was funded through generous grants
from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation totaling $25 million.



www.brain-map.org.
Browse the Allen Brain Atlas
he Allen Institute for Brain Science provides data and associated
tools as free open resources for the global scientific community.

The Allen Institute for Brain Science project to characterize gene
expression in the human cortex presents gene expression patterns
at cellular resolution across different cortical regions and human
individuals, as measured using colorimetric in situ hybridization.
This web-based application allows viewing of indexed image sets
searchable by gene, cortical region, donor and tissue
characteristics.