What does the 2022 Waiex-B One Week Wonder have in-common with Space Shuttle Discovery, B-29 Enola Gay, Bob Hoover’s Shrike Commander and other historic aircraft? As-of Wednesday, May 14th, they all live together in the same building! Waiex-B N220WW has been added to the collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Musuem at the Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center.
“Thousands of people participated in the building of this ‘One Week Wonder’ at Oshkosh just a few years ago to show that building your own airplane is attainable,” said Charlie Becker, EAA’s director of chapters, communities, and homebuilt community manager, who accompanied the aircraft on the journey to its new home. “Now as many as a million people every year will see this aircraft as an example of a modern kit aircraft that can be built with simple hand tools by just about anyone.”
N220WW was built in seven days by over 2,000 volunteers at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2022. You can relive the Waiex-B One Week Wonder build in pictures and videos on our AirVenture 2022 Report. The Wonder made its first flight on August 18, 2022: Watch the First Flight Video.
“This airplane will impress visitors with the innovation and technology that is everywhere in the homebuilding movement and recreational aviation,” said Russell Lee, curator of homebuilt aircraft at the National Air and Space Museum. “Although one of the smallest airplanes displayed at the Udvar-Hazy Center, its power to excite visitors about the freedom of flight equals the largest aircraft displayed here.”
OWW Has Some Great Neighbors!
Waiex-B N220WW is parked between the Boeing 307 Stratoliner “Clipper Flying Cloud” and the Bell XV-15 Tilt Rotor Research Aircraft in the NASM Udvar-Hazy Center. Also nearby is Concorde Fox Alpha, Bob Hoover’s Shrike Commander, and “Dash 80,” the Boeing 707 prototype famously barrel rolled by Tex Johnston. Perhaps most fitting, the One Week Wonder is displayed near “Little Gee Bee,” the aircraft that George Bogardus flew from Oregon to Washington D.C. three separate times to convince the FAA (the CAA at the time) that amateurs could design and build light aircraft that were safe, reliable, and capable of practical cross-country flights. This led to the CAA’s sanctioning of the registration and operation of amateur-built aircraft in 1952, which paved the way for Paul Poberezny to found EAA.
This is not the first John Monnett design to grace the Smithsonian either, as a customer-built Moni Motorglider is also displayed in the Udvar-Hazy center, hung from the ceiling not far from the One Week Wonder.
The Waiex-B 2022 One Week Wonder, displayed next to the Boeing 307 Stratoliner “Clipper Flying Cloud” with the tail of “Dash 80,” the Boeing 707 prototype visible in the background.
Pictured from left to right: EAA Communities Director Charlie Becker, Sonex Owner & President Mark Schaible, EAA Volunteer Rob Brown, NASM Aeronautics Department Chair Russell Lee, and NASM Collections Processing Specialist Ted Hack.
The Monnett Moni Motorglider hangs in the NASM Udvar-Hazy Center above B-29 “Enola Gay.”
The aircraft that paved the way for all amateur builders: George Bogardus’s “Little Gee Bee.”
N220WW loaded in the Sonex trailer ready for a road trip to the National Air and Space Musuem in Washington, D.C.
The Waiex-B One Week Wonder arrives in its new home at the NASM Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center.
2022 One Week Wonder Volunteers
Relive the 2022 One Week Wonder in Pictures and Videos!
