Done by Alex at Artkore Tattoo in Normal IL.
This is a tattoo of a Curtiss Condor airplane. Specifically, of the model Curtiss Condor in the Smithsonian in DC built by David Shipton.
That man is pretty much a grandpa to me. Him and dad go way back.
As long as I can remember I woke up every Saturday morning to Dave in our kitchen drinking coffee and talking with dad and I’d always join them and sit on the floor and just listen to them talk, mostly about airplanes.
Once I was older, somewhere in Junior High, instead of Dave going to our house, we went out to his in the country where he had a flying field. He taught Dad and I to fly control line airplanes. It was amazing. He has a museum of model planes out there, hundreds of planes. He built them. All.
Eventually he was old enough that he couldn’t fly anymore and he had trouble with the steps at home so him and dad met at this Antique Store and had coffee there. That was when I started college, so around the last year of his life, I barely saw him.
He passed away last May. I was a disaster over it, haha. Later that August we spread his ashes on the flying field and flew. He used to have a “Fly-In” where people from all over the US came to his home, and they all flew airplanes all day. All different kinds of planes. I met some amazing people each year. So the main flyers he knew got together and flew in his memory this year. It was a pretty emotional day for me.
So I decided to get this plane in memory of him. It’s the plane that’s in the smithsonian, with some color alterations. I love him. I love it.