Come to the Legacy Flight Museum for the Bristol Centaurus, stay for the amazing aircraft
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The Legacy Flight Museum in Rexburg recently added a unique new attraction to its collection: an 18-cylinder Bristol Centaurus engine that gives visitors a glimpse into the mechanical working of the internal combustion engine. The engine sports strategically-placed cutaways created by Reno, Nevada, mechanic Brian Peaden, revealing the inner structures of the motor.
The Bristol Centaurus features a cutting edge design that replaced the regular valves in the cylinders with rotating sleeves that regulated the intake of fuel and air. This innovation saved weight while preserving the amount of horsepower the engine produced. The Centaurus is attached to a small electric motor which slowly turns the engine over so visitors can see its unique inner workings.
Although the Bristol Centaurus display is fascinating, there’s so much more to see at Legacy Flight Museum.
Founded by Madison County resident John Bagley in 2006, Legacy Flight Museum is home to a collection of aircraft and related accessories from aviation history. Highlights include a pair of P-51 Mustangs, a Grumman S-2 Tracker and a P-63 King Cobra.
With two exceptions, every aircraft in the Legacy collection is airworthy. The display and upkeep of these aircraft is a huge part of accomplishing the museum’s mission.
“We have a series of planes that people can go through and visualize, see firsthand,” museum volunteer Bruce Radford told EastIdahoNews.com. “They can touch them, as long as they don’t get too rambunctious. They cannot get into them, but they can schedule rides in certain planes if they have the money.”
Keeping the old planes flyable dominates the museum volunteers’ time and efforts.
“Every airplane that flies has to have an annual completed on it once a year,” Radford said. “An annual may include anything from changing of the oils to changing tires, sparkplugs, anything like that that’s not tearing the whole plane apart.”
Radford also said that the amount of time each plane’s engine spends running is rigorously tracked. When the engines hit a certain number of hours, they must undergo a complete overhaul to replace the worn-out pieces with new or refurbished parts.
This leads to another obstacle the Legacy staff must overcome.
“Parts for these old planes are getting hard to find,” said Radford. “So it’s challenging when it comes to that.”
All the effort to keep the old planes in shape is rewarded when the Legacy Flight staff sees the reactions of museum visitors.
“A lot of it is an ‘Oh, wow!’ reaction,” Radford said. “They didn’t know that something was that big. They didn’t know that something like that was that noisy. They didn’t know that there were actually so many people in these planes. They’re just amazed.”
Radford says working at Legacy Flight often fills him with the same sense of wonder, as well as a lot of pride.
“Awe. Put it that way,” he said, describing how he feels when he sees the planes in the museum. “Awe that this really works. This is what they had to use during that period, whatever period plane that is. This is how they accomplished so much. … There’s a lot of pride in knowing that some of the history that you have been involved with yourself can be related back to what you see out here (in the museum). It might not be with the same part of the military, but you can still say, ‘I was there once.’”
You can witness these winged wonders of history and engineering at the Legacy Flight Museum in Rexburg. The museum’s current hours are Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Visit the museum’s Facebook page or website for more information.
