Udvar-Hazy annex to Smithsonian A&S Museum

Perhaps this is a sermon to the choir, but I dropped by the UH annex
last Monday (MLK Day, off from work) and spent a good couple of hours
just wandering around on my own, marveling at the place. It's
HUGE...realistically speaking, the curators have probably only filled
2/3 of the floor space available now, and that's with many of the
floor exhibits having more space than needed. Some areas could be
condensed to make even more floor space open, and that doesn't take
into account the amazing volume of hanging space for smaller aircraft.

High points...

1. Enola Gay - Big, well displayed (overhead vantage point and
interior lighting for the bombadier position), and beautiful.
2. Concorde - I list this before the Blackbird because the Concorde
is, IMO, better displayed. You can walk under it, which really
highlights the size of the engine pods and the expanse of the wing.
3. Blackbird - A walkway takes you above and just behind the tails, so
you can look down on the rear of the mainbody. You can also look
inside the burner cans. It's a beauty.
4. WWII warbirds - Their Lightning looks rather rough, but the rest
(sorry, can't recall all the types) are nice. One Navy bird is
configured for landing and suspended, quite striking.
5. Overall layout - Both the floor walkways and the catwalks are
routed so that you can get several good, different angles to view most
of the exhibits. As displays are added, I can imagine that some
sightlines might get cut or compressed, but for the most part, it's
fabulous. The spiral stairway over by the Concorde, for example, is
ideal for gettting nice elevated pics of both the Concorde and the
XV-15 parked by it.

It's a must-see. I would be thrilled to have a YF-22 or -23
displayed...there's an engineless X-35 in there now. Having an ATF
contender suspended over the Modern Combat display (MiG-21, F-4, X-35)
would be stunning. The only disappointment, IMO, is that the Shuttle
hangar seems to be more of a storage space that just happens to have
Enterprise parked in it than an actual real display.

Oh, couple of key miscellaneous points. #1. It's free admission but
$12 parking, and if you imagine the line to park might be long, it
probably will be. #2. Depending on flight ops at Dulles, one could
conceivably park on the shoulder along the drive to the parking gates
and watch the heavies on final approach cross JUST overhead, as a
north-south runway terminates probably 500 yards from the road.