NASAM Update as of the 18th Mar 2022

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From the Chair

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Annual General Meeting

For Museum Members only, notice herby given that there will be an Annual General Meeting of the Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation Museum. The meeting is to be held on Tuesday the 12th of July 2022 commencing at 1900 in the main hangar at the Museum. All museum members are invited to attend.

Steve

General Updates

We start the blog with an update from the Chair, concerning the AGM for the members at the Museum.

We then continue below with updates from a number of people who attended the Harleston Remembrance Event for the fallen crew of a Wellington bomber and a Hurricane pilot who all sadly lost their lives in this vicinity on the 9th March 1942. We had volunteers from the museum that attended and the Secretary of the local branch of the Royal British Legion supply more photos and links to more detailed documents.

With Barry still down with the lergy, Mark K sent the first of the Painters update, and Barry, having recovered, sent in the second instalment. Tony in Archives produced a piece on course notes along with GEE notes. John in Engineering reported on the EoN Glider going off to pastures new to be renovated and flown again.

We finish the blog, just behind the shop, in the modeller’s den. Peter W is nearing completion of this project to show modellers throughout four time periods from “Post War“, through the “60s and early 70s” to the “70s and 80s” to finally “Post 80s“.

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Harleston Remembrance

On the 9th of March 2022, five museum volunteers attended an Act of Remembrance service in Harleston.

It was held at their war memorial to remember the 80th anniversary of seven crew members of a Wellington Bomber and a Hawker Hurricane who lost their lives when their aircrafts crashed near Harleston on 9th March 1942. The service was organised by the Harleston and District Royal British Legion. School children from a local school were in attendance. I should think about 60 people attended; wreaths were laid and two minutes silence was observed followed by Reveille.

The last picture below is of Bob C, a volunteer member at the Museum, with some of his artefacts from one of the sites (Remembrance 15),.

I found it very moving.

Pam V

Notes:

The words came from Pam V, who attended the service of remembrance.
The Harleston wreath laying 01 thru 04 photos were supplied by Brian, a volunteer at the museum who attended the remembrance service.
Our thanks go to Terry Pegg, Secretary of the Harleston & District Branch of the Royal British Legion, who supplied the Remembrance 01 thru 15 photos as well as the two links mentioned below.
Terry also supplied a file which gives more details of the service and also details of the photographs. This file will be kept for future reference. The document can be found by following the link @ Harelston Remembrance PDF file
A link to the Diss Express which published the story can be found @ Diss Express Report

(Photos) Harleston Remembrance

EoN Glider Departs

After an extended loan of about 18 years from the Norfolk Gliding Club (NGC), the EoN Glider has gone. The NGC advised that they did not want repossession, instead, we were given the contact name of John Gilbert who restores gliders.

John intends to strip this glider back to the basic structure and rebuild it to fly, albeit just for short hops. this is just as well because the glue used in the construction must have outlived its useful life by now. See photos of the departure below Eon Glider 02 thru 06.

John S

(Photos) EoN Glider Departs

From the Archives

Course Notes

While a lot of the documentation in the Archive is official and organisational, occasionally we do get items of a more personal nature. One example comprises notes that air force personnel took when they were on courses of instruction; they kept their exercise books and handed them on to their children whence they came to us. It is a moving experience, reading what they wrote and, in cases where the exercise books cover a range of courses, seeing how they progressed through the ranks; Aircraftsman to Flying Officer is not unusual. It is also instructive to see just how much they had to write and to assimilate; remember that these were the days long before handouts and photocopies. The attention to detail and the artwork in many of the exercise books is astonishing; a couple of examples are below (Course Notes 01 and 02).

GEE Course Notes

Of inestimable value is the information they provide, uniquely supplementing the official publications – where we have them! I’ve included shots of the notes taken on a GEE course (GEE Notes 01 and 02).

Nowhere else have I seen diagrams of the oscilloscope displays with accompanying notes; this is what the navigators had to interpret and translate into heading instructions for the pilots in those early days of electronic navaids.

Tony L

(Photos) Course Notes & GEE

Painters Update

8/3/22 – Thin on the ground!

With Cliff away and Barry and Gwen both off sick/injured, it was left to Ian and Mark to carry the (paint?) can for the paint team.

Thinking that, with the boss away, they could have an easy day, Ian and Mark started by cleaning engines in the main hangar. Unfortunately for Ian and Mark, others had plans to move said engines around, so the morning was largely spent pushing and shoving large pieces of metal into small spaces (Engine Cleaning 01).

After lunch, our intrepid heroes decided that if they hid atop the scaffold tower in the main hangar they could get some rest. Sadly the hangar door paint, which from ground level looked like it was throwing itself off of the metal, had other ideas (Scraping 01). Despite much paint scraping, they will have to return next week to finish stripping the panels ready for repainting. Ian was heard to mutter, over the considerable noise of the scraping, that he was never going to listen to Mark’s bright ideas ever again. Still, the view from the top of the scaffold tower was good…

Mark K

15/3/22 – In a bit of a scrape!

This week the team were involved in a variety of tasks that all seemed to involve scraping (the bottom of the barrel? – Ed.) at some point!

In the morning Cliff set about scraping off all the ‘Social Distancing’ markings off of the floor of the Main Hangar. Meanwhile, Ian and Mark continued scraping off the loose paint from the inside of the hangar doors (see Scraping 02) from the top of the scaffold tower. Down below, Barry was tasked with cleaning the Hunter testbed which, in common with many exhibits, had accumulated a lot of dust and dirt (see Hunter Nose 01).

In the afternoon, Ian and Mark gave the (scraped) hangar doors a coat of grey primer, ready for a top coat next week. Back at ground level, having finished cleaning the Hunter front end, Barry started to remove the white stripe from both sides of the fuselage (see Hunter Nose 02 from above). The nose section of the white stripe is painted, but for some reason the rest of the stripe is vinyl and over time this has started to come away at the edges and has also gone mouldy in places. So, the plan is to replace the vinyl stripe with a painted stripe all the way down the sides. In order to do this, Barry had to remove the current vinyl stripe, which proved to be a bit of a challenge. The white vinyl layer came away no problem but the adhesive layer stayed very stuck on! Full of bright ideas, a passing Dave D suggested using a heat gun to loosen the adhesive and then scraping it off. Barry got stuck into the task (quite literally) and after about an hour of heating and scraping the vast majority of adhesive tape was off. The last remnants of adhesive were then removed using rags soaked in thinners. Job done!

Barry

(Photos) Painters Update

Modellers Den Issue 3

What a difference a day makes

Tuesday 22nd February already seems a long while ago, but it was the day the boxes of supporting artefacts started being opened to bring life to the four tabletop displays. Tools, materials, coffee mugs, radios, driving licence, loose change and lots of contemporary aviation books and magazines.

One of the great things about working at Flixton is the support from fellow volunteers. A cheery “I’ve brought you a present” on several occasions from Cliff F heralded more empty kit boxes and even a disused airbrush. My favourite has to be a 1944 first edition of ‘First book of Model Aircraft’ courtesy of the Stirling Aircraft Project. It is now open at the back of the Bay 1 modeller’s desk showing one of the many model build projects, all made form ‘scrap material’ in line with wartime regulations. Thanks, Cliff.

22^nd Feb was also Jim’s turn to star. “These might be safer in the Den than the model store,” he said. Two small, old, cardboard boxes. OMG! A pair of first issue Frog Penguin 1/72 plastic kits, the Spitfire I originally from 1939, and P38 Lightning from 1942, untouched and complete. They are historical artefacts in their own right. The plastic is not like modern polystyrene. The detail is minimal, the fit is poor and a large instruction sheet with plan is provided, as well as surprisingly well-preserved decals and even a small piece of wet and dry paper. Post-war Frog kit boxes in the Den boast ‘no sanding or carving required’ as an advert to tempt modellers away from wood kits, but frankly, that feels a bit optimistic.

The Bay 1 table display was promptly reorganised to focus on the Spitfire kit out of the box as if our young modeller had just been given it. In the Den timescale it would already have been a ten-year-old kit, but just too good to miss. This is so rare we may need to get the large instruction sheet reproduced and keep the original archived out of the light.

Ian S has helped with signage and the clever idea of using strategically placed clipboards in each bay to avoid obscuring the exhibits. The first feedback from volunteers is that it works nicely.

Meanwhile, repairs at home continue. The late Brian Riggs’ beautiful 1/32 FW190A has had its undercarriage repaired, and the rest of the work in progress was temporarily boxed up ready for the newly cleaned mighty 1/32nd B24 to consume the whole working space for some TLC. I had assumed it was a recent donation of one of the two current injection moulded models on the market, but paperwork in the bottom of the transit tray revealed that it’s a much older Combat Models vac form, with extensive metal and resin components. It is very well finished in bespoke markings as JU-Q ‘Queenie’, a 446^th BG 707 Squadron B24 based at Flixton.

Despite its size the model is also very delicate, so to help protect Queenie in the future the chippies have whizzed me up a sizeable base from MDF sheet that I intend to fashion into an authentic 446^th BG Flixton ‘panhandle’ dispersal. I’ve tapped into the NASAM information network to help make it historically accurate and sourced a nice cameo of four 1/32 aircrew figures to provide scale.

How quickly things change – the figures are a recent release in the excellent range from ICM. By the time they arrived and I opened the box I was poignantly reminded of where ICM models are made – Kyiv, Ukraine. Much of our museum inevitably charts the history of warfare, and suddenly here we are with artefacts very pertinent to what we see daily on our TV screens.

Peter W

(Photos) Modellers Den

RAF BBMF Flypasts

Earlier in the week, we published details of the first four flypasts that have been scheduled by the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. For details follow the link @ https://aviationmuseum.site/Flypasts1

The dates are as follows:

Scout Air Activities Day – 30th April 2022 – Flypast by a Spitfire and a Hurricane
East Coast Pirates @ NASAM – 8th May 2022 – Flypast by a Hurricane
40s Themed Day @ NASAM – 15th May 2022 – Flypast by a Hurricane
Aviation Art and Plastic Model Day – 22nd May 2022 – Flypast by a Lancaster

The Repeat Info

The repeat information is still here I’m afraid, and I make no apologies for keeping his section in our blog. We are a charitable organisation relying on monies from the public to keep us going. Any help we receive is gratefully accepted and enables the museum to continue in our mission “To conserve, preserve and promote the history of aviation in East Anglia, whilst providing a fun, family-friendly and interactive museum, promoting education and remembrance of the events of the past“.

Are you thinking of helping ??

We obtain most of our finances by donations and by membership fees. We save money by having a dedicated group of volunteers that keep the museum and the exhibits both manned and maintained. We hope therefore a few people may consider helping in the ways below.

There are three easy ways to help: Help by becoming a Museum Member, also by Volunteering to help at the museum, or by Donating to assist in our running costs. Please click on the appropriate button below to access the appropriate information:

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