Flying low over Miami County

Flying Low over Miami County
If you haven’t yet taken the time to walk the streets of Troy this summer, plan on doing so on a pleasant July day. But look sharp, there are low flying airplanes everywhere.
Twenty Six fiberglass WACO airplane sculptures are swooping, rolling and zooming at eye level along Main and Market Streets within 3 blocks of the fountain. These six by five foot replicas are of the popular WACO bi-plane with hand made wooden cockpits, powerful engines and fabric covered wings that dominated the skies after World War I.
The sculptures are a joint project between the Waco Learning Center and Museum and Troy Main Street. Designed to showcase and contrast the creativity of current artists with the rich heritage of Miami County in the form of modern art used to decorate these fiberglass replicas. The sculptures are designed to evoke memories and visions of America’s most popular bi-plane from the era when ‘real planes had two wings and a round engine’.
If you like taking pictures, there is a great Photo Contest for pictuires of the planes going on throughout July! (see sidebar)
The designs of the many artists are as diverse as the history of aviation and the styles and minds of painters and artists who live here today.
Each plane has the theme of the artist, and their breadth is phenomenal. The one that first caught my eye is a pseudo architectural rendering, where the internal struts and components are painted on the outside to look like the plane was turned inside out.
Waco’s were exported around the world, their productive deliveryman, Charles Lindbergh, was cheered in France as an American hero and global ambassador when he flew a Piqua Ohio Hartzell propeller into a cheering Paris.
Two planes highlight the dozens of countries where Waco’s flew; one with dozens of flags, the other with luggage-like stickers from cities in those countries. They highlight how early aviation shrunk our world, just a few decades after steam ships plowed the seas, and barely a few score years before rockets left the earth completely.
Modern life is the theme of others. Buckeye fans will appreciate the grey and red motif on one (get on tip toe to see the top of the wing). Students can repeat the summer mantra “No more teachers’ no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks…” when you see the two planes crafted by Troy students. The 6th graders created a virtual yearbook, and the high schoolers a multi-media montage of the Troy school experience from pencils to lockers to slogans.
The juxtaposition of sky and land, people and buildings were selected by a few artists; camouflaging a plane to look like a soaring monarch butterfly in one case, or blending in with lifelike pictures of clouds and sky on another. One has a barnstorming theme, another covered bridges. But they are all unique and different.
Which one is the best? Hard to tell, but there are ballots in most shops around the square, and the best will win the artist a $1,000 prize at the awards ceremony when the planes fly of into the sunset at the end of August. (If you really like one, plan on bidding for it, they will all be sold at the Waco fly-in August 25th.
Waco, the Weaver Aero Company was based in Troy. With locations throughout the city, but centered in the large hangar like buildings that are now Goodrich wheel and brake division visible from Archer Drive. The Troy Civic Theatre performs in an old barn that was once a Waco construction hangar.
The new Waco museum opened a few weeks ago to celebrate the arrival of the sculptures, and is a great place to spend a few hours learning about the planes, the people who made them, and exploring aviation as part of the Aviation Historic Trail that has dozens of sites throughout the Miami Valley. Everyone should explore the trail, taking in a few places each time, it can be a long term learning experience or crammed into a whirlwind weekend. The sites, ranging from the original Wright Brothers home to Huffman Prairie, the field where they practiced before and after the historic flights in Kitty Hawk, and on to the air force museum where the largest collection of planes are on exhibit (and most sites are free!).