http://www.nmaw.org/

Worth going to if you've never been.

That looks awesome, I might go.

I was all psyched up to go, after having missed it since 2010... but alas, my daughter's been running a 102 fever all week, and I think I've caught whatever she had.

Was looking forward to the P51 flyby, USMC Historical Company, and getting more action footage of my favorite tank (Strv 103).  
Maybe next year.

Definitely worth the trip if you've never been to it.

Can't go this year due to family, but I'm going to try and go in the spring.

Anyone decide to go? Headed out in a few hours.

Yeah, I'm taking the fam.

Cool ill be the guy in the Arfcom shirt that's been hoarding lbs for shtf.

LOL, I be wearing my OD Larue hat.

I was the one in green with the jeep with the.30 cal mounted on the passenger step.

Think I saw ya, would have been good to know while I was there.

That was really something, we had a great time.  Looking forward to the real museum being opened.

Did the P51 make it yesterday?

Not at all kid friendly, kids can't touch the vehicles.  

Flamethrower exhibition was cool.

No, that was disappointing.

Just the armor was no touch...most of the regular vehicle owners would let kids climb all over their vehicles.  

The flamethrower demo was cool... I was 100 plus yards away and could feel the heat from that thing.  I can just imagine how hot it would be when you're holding it!

Everything I saw had a "No climbing" sign up.  The flamethrower demo was indeed awesome.

Work responsibilities kept me from volunteering this year, but in the past I was one of the staff helping to keep people off the armor. Most of it predates OSHA by a bunch of decades, has all sorts of unfriendly, sharp projections, gets crazy slick with the slightest precip, and is made of steel so any encounter with Newtonian physics ends poorly. Add to that the fact that a lot of the gear hung from some of the tanks are flat out collector's items that folks take a cavalier attitude towards and combine it with painstaking restorations . . . well suffice to say they are only one lawsuit away from an end of open houses and the investment in all that equipment is huge in both time and money.

With that said, look me up if I'm there next year and I'll see what I can get you into. My kids spent a lot of time in the BMPs. Better yet, come out and volunteer to help set up. Nothing like power washing armor, dropping car batteries down hatches to get those beasts started, troubleshooting any problems that arises, as well as all the less glamorous jobs to be had. I guarantee you after a day of working on armor you'll have a new appreciation of just how easy it is to earn contusions while wrangling it. It's where my kids learned about the joys of repacking wheel bearings and such so you can toss them into the fray too.

Copy and thanks.  In 1st LAR in the Corps, I knew well what it was like to do dog and pony shows with the vehicles for folks.  The Marine Corps on Camp Pendleton has no problems with folks and kids on their fighting vehicles hence my surprise.

I've been volunteering out that way for about 10 years; 90 percent of the folks who show up for the Open House have their heads screwed on straight and likely could climb on armor without issue. Indeed, one of the reason's I like working there is because it's one of the few crowds where just about everyone feels like one of my peeps. But then there's always that 10 percent who wants the entire brood to inch out to the end of a tank barrel for the family pic. I've had folks try to sneak under the tape to get closer to the flamethrower (If I hadn't interceded they would not have had to make a trip to their barber for quite some time), stand in the driver's blind spot as a piece of armor rolled to "get a better picture," and all manner of other foolishness. Standard story: a couple boneheads make it hard on everyone else.