NASAM Update as of the 24th Feb 2023

Click on the article to go direct [joli-toc]

From The Chair

Open At Last

After a longer-than-usual winter break the museum is back open to the public. The volunteers have had to make the place safe and welcoming for visitors. This has obviously been achieved, 500 visitors came through the gates during our first three days of opening, although in fairness it was half term week.

Quite a high percentage of the visitors took up the new offer of cockpit access tickets. We had the three outside aircraft open each morning, and the cockpits in the main hangar open in the afternoon. The new guidebook was popular too, at only £5 it’s a very good read and tells the story of Flixton very well. Thanks to Bob Cossey for once again updating the book and succeeding in keeping up with the improvements that the volunteers are making.

Steve

General Updates

In This Edition

Updates from the Chair and Teams

We start this edition of the Blog with an opener from Steve on the start of the new year at the Museum.

This is followed below by another story from the Front Of House, Peter W relating a meeting with a visitor on the first day of opening this year. Michael from the Chippies Team provided input that covers a good deal of December and January from the Chippies’ point of view as they continue to provide cabinets for the main hanger displays. We have more from Malcolm, with an update from the Model Maintenance Unit, on his last entry about the Vampire and the Central Flying School displays.

And finally, in this edition, we have more from the Archives and Graham with information taken from an Airshow Brochure produced by the Norfolk and Norwich Aero Club for a display at the Mousehold Aerodrome. Mousehold is just outside the Norwich outer ring road and was originally a training ground for Cavalry units before becoming the Royal Flying Corps Mousehold Heath aerodrome. The aerodrome was used by Boulton Paul as well as other aircraft manufacturers. It became Royal Air Force Mousehold Heath in April 1918. Hopefully, our Norfolk readers will find this article of interest. We have a photo of the brochure cover as well as an advert of the day printed inside the brochure.

Easter Egg Hunt at the Museum

As part of the family day out on the East Anglia Air Ambulance Day at the Museum on Sunday, the 9^th of April 2023, the Museum will have an Easter Egg Hunt throughout the day. This will take the form of a quiz for the children with a prize for all children competing, and the prize for taking part is an Easter Egg, would you believe 😀

We are very fortunate that local businesses, volunteers at the Museum and individuals donate Easter eggs for this family day out. If you would like to add to the number of eggs needed, please feel free to donate an egg or two. Eggs can be handed in at the shop on the days we are open, either before the 9^th of April or on the day. All eggy donations will be gratefully accepted.

At the end of the day, the Museum will make a donation to the East Anglia Air Ambulance charity and help keep the two air ambulance helicopters flying life-saving missions in our region.

Opening Days and Times

Just a note to confirm that the Museum will be open every Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday and Bank Holidays Mondays for the foreseeable future. The opening times will be from 1000 until 1600.

As in previous years, entry to the Museum is free, as is parking on-site.

Spot the Visitor

Tuesday was a workday at the Museum, and the Chief Volunteer sent me a couple of photos of a visitor that was heard approaching low level but then, presumably using the Museum as a turning point, veered away and was soon gone into the distance. Trying to take a photo of the visitor proved elusive as the aircraft was soon gone. However, the photos are below if you can spot what type of visitor it was.

Pete S

Click to enlarge

From The Teams

Front Of House

Blackmail at Flixton!

It’s always a bit special while stewarding on a public day, when a visitor turns up who has a personal or family connection to one of our aircraft or other exhibits.

So it was on 15^th February, our very first morning open this season. The lady in question came aboard the Valetta clutching her brothers’ research on their father. This gentleman had clearly had a remarkable flying career. Trained on Tiger Moths and Masters, he had seen active service in Beaufighters and Mosquitos. He was credited with piloting the first commercial flight into the new London Airport at Heath Row in 1946, and subsequently flew piston, turboprop and jet airliners for BEA.

There in the list was the Vickers Viking, civil variant of our Valetta. Our visitor found herself on a flight deck that would have been familiar to her father, over sixty years previously. In the renovated civil collection now in the BP hangar is a 1/72 scale model Viking G-AJBR that might just be in the markings of one of the Vikings flown by him.

After a pause for reflection she then got onto the Blackmail story.

While flying Mosquitos, her father had been tasked with some highly secret flights taking special radio transmission equipment over the Netherlands. A Dutch operative took the place of the navigator to attempt direct radio transmission with agents on the ground.

Research once back home confirmed that 264 Squadron flew missions code-named “Blackmail” in February 1945. It appears that only four pilots were selected to carry out the missions, and they were segregated to maintain secrecy.

Not for the first time, a visitor has left an intriguing story that links our collection to their family history, and departed without a trace. How I hope she returns with her brother and allows us to document that connection with a view to a possible future exhibit celebrating her father.

Peter W

Chippies in Hibernation?

The latest Online Flyer sparked a note in the somnolent Chippy brains as they slumbered in their warm lair, better known as the Workshop. Was that the first inkling of Spring and time for the Museum to open, or is it still Winter outside? In a brief period of lucidity, the Chippy correspondent scribbled down what they had dreamt before rolling over and going back to sleep for a few more weeks.

And what had they dreamt of? Well, it was of new shining white display cabinets in Luftwaffe Weg that fitted like gloves first time and were ready for opening day in February. And the reality?

Luftwaffe Weg part 1

It started with a request for two new cabinets next to the first that had housed the commercial displays until they moved to the Boulton and Paul Hangar. “We’ll make two just the same size and shape,” said Dave H, who in some distant past had built it. “Are you sure one that size will fit?” responded Ash and Michael F. “Of course”, came the reply, and Dave proceeded to order enough timber and perspex.

Michael and Ash looked at each other, got out their trusty tape measures and proceeded to the scene of the crime. Doing what all good Chippies do, they measured and re-measured, wrote down numbers and drew sketches and returned to the workshop to drink tea and tell Dave the bad news: if we built to his dimensions, they wouldn’t fit. Each building frame in the Main Hangar is a slightly different distance apart. In addition, the big cabinet to the left was built around the last frame so, reducing the space further. Fortunately, it meant building smaller cabinets by a few inches, but not by much. “And by the way, the construction method is different from the one we use now” “Never mind, we’ll build them the same … but different”.

Ash and Michael then went off to construct the new shelves for the commercial displays in the B&P Hangar (see previous Flyer), and Dave started cutting up wood for the new cabinets, ready for the day assembly could start. To get further ahead, he and Morris built six “ladder” end and centre frames, together with the bases and roofs.

Just before Christmas, with the B&P shelves away in Engineering for the Painters attention, Ash and Michael could start on the heavy lifting: literally lifting pieces to assemble the first cabinet on top of one of the trolleys. Except…. some of the pieces didn’t fit! Out came the trusty tape measures and drawings. Oh dear! Some pieces had been cut to the new measurements and some to the old. Oops! Time for tea and consultation. What was the best way to rectify the problem? More tea and more consultation.

With a plan hatched, it was back to work. A judicious use of trim saws, multitools, and a bit of disassembly and reassembly and you would never have known there was a problem. A recheck of the measurements and everything was fine. Wasn’t it?

So while the second cabinet was trimmed, jostled and pulled into shape, Morris and Les W stepped in with paintbrushes to finish the first. Early January saw the final coats going on both cabinets and the perspex cut ready for insertion as shelves (we leave the protective film on, which is why the shelves look white).

And so to installation. Christmas Opening was over, so we could leave a “tidy” mess in the Main Hangar, so we loaded the first cabinet on a trolley and rolled it over from the Workshop. Ash, Les and Michael lifted in front of the gap in between the building frames and gently pushed it back. Phew! It fitted. Out it came again to have its back, sides and roof screwed into place. As the Hangar can get cold and damp and is notorious among Volunteers for condensation, we had decided – based on a Dave D idea – to use heavy-duty plastic to protect the back and roof, which would be inaccessible in future. Final assembly complete, assisted by Les, more gentle manoeuvring and cabinet one in place. Time for a celebratory cup of tea, lunch and cabinet two in the afternoon.

Feeling a bit blasé, we brought the second cabinet over, put on the back, sides and roof plus the plastic sheet and pushed! At this point, as everyone reading this expects, it went wrong. It got stuck part way in. “It’s too wide!”. “How can it be too wide? We measured it. It’s the same size as the other one!” “What’s stopping it?” Well at one end it was catching the right-hand frame, and at the other, it was catching the existing cabinet. Time for tape measures, head scratching and cups of tea. So the cabinet was slightly oversize because we forgot to allow for the 5mm ply on either end. But the other one fitted. And there was some skirting on the existing cabinet that could come off. But even though measurements at the top and bottom showed that there should have been at least 3 inches (75mm), it still stuck.

As the light faded on a cold January day, realisation struck. Not only are the building frames in the hangar unevenly spaced but some of them are not quite vertical. So the frames are parallel, hence the same measurements all the way up, but at an angle. Putting in something that is actually vertical (yes, we do build things properly) needs to match the minimum vertical space. With a spirit level, we found we needed to lose an inch (25mm) at the back, but the question was what was the best way to do it, other than taking the whole cabinet apart again? No more tea; we were all tea’d out. It was time to go home and sleep on it.

The following Tuesday, with Ash off sick (not stressed!) Dave H and Michael returned to the scene of the crime with some extra tools: the multitool with saw blades attached and a sabre saw. There were several ways of fixing this, but the easiest appeared to be to cut a 1-inch piece off the cross pieces at the back on the right-hand side and trim down the ply to fit. We’d leave the base, the most difficult to trim, in the hope that it would still fit. We were fairly confident, but fingers were definitely crossed. Well…. it worked. For a morning’s careful work, everything went to plan, and the cabinet slid into place. Job done …. at last.

Perhaps it wasn’t the first inklings of Spring that woke the hibernating Chippies but a nightmare in Luftwaffe Weg.

Stayed tuned for Luftwaffe Weg part 2 some time soonish….

Michael

(Photos) Chippies Update

Model Maintenance Unit Update

Just a short update this time

Vampire T11- Plan ‘C’

Further to my last update with the Vampire decal disaster, further attempts to add dayglow stripes to the model also failed. So plan C was instigated and the model was masked up to represent an earlier (1958) scheme for a T11 flown by the Central Flying School at RAF Little Rissington (see Vampire T11 Model 04 thru 07).

Apart from the decals a great little model to build (Airfix 1/72)

Malcolm

(Photos) MMU Update

From the Archives

Mousehold Aerodrome Airshow – May 30th 1928

I found this little gem a few weeks ago whilst looking for something completely different in the Archives. We take air shows for granted today – but this is the earliest record that I’ve ever seen of program for one, and the attractions on offer are fantastic – you certainly don’t get balloon bursting or aerial golf at a Duxford show now – and I think I would pay to see Aeroplane v Car, especially if the car is the annoying bloke who always does 25mph on the A144 in front of me on the way in to the museum on a Tuesday.

The venue was Mousehold (go find that on a map!), the organisers were the Norfolk and Norwich Aero Club and the attendees briefly (for 17 minutes!) included Edward Prince of Wales – a full three years before he met Wallace Simpson. This is so much more than just Aviation history!

All the following text is taken directly from the program – it’s a bit long winded but well worth the effort to trawl through!

Graham

A FLIGHT THROUGH TIME

WATCHERS of this fete today, seeing the wondrous movement of weird structures of wing, wheel, and wire, may well pause and wonder at the age in which we live.

To some, no doubt, an Aerial Fete is but another addition to the weekly round of pleasure and amusement. Limiting themselves, they estimate the value of a display by the amount of personal thrill extracted from the entertainment. Others, however, observing the mastery of the elements and marvellous precision of control by expert pilots, may well try and improve themselves by a little comparison.

Many to-day will recall other days and other scenes. Strolling mentally along the broadwalks of time, they will think of the struggle of man to master the elements, his ceaseless battles with mountain, stream, and sea; his pathetic efforts to lift himself from the trammels of earth by wondrous buildings towering to the sky. They will see again the Roman legions rampaging, perhaps, around this very Aerodrome.

Unable to fly, these self-same Romans stuck eagles on their helmets, eagles on their banners, eagles on their chariots. A sign and a symbol of speed, power, and victory!

To fly swifter than the eagle has always been the summit of human ambitions. Yet Roman, Dane, and Saxon, Viking, Angles, and Norman all passed this way without discovering the great secret.

Strange, indeed, that the great secret of flight should be revealed to a generation steeped in commerce.

Equally strange that the pilots of these harbingers of aerial conquest should be more concerned with the art of peace than the dread panoply of war.

As we look across the landing grounds and see the jolly-faced young pilots bubbling with the joy and vitality of the upper air, conquering before our eyes the elements which stopped the armies and the navies of history, we reflect on the wonder of it all and are thankful that this most marvellous of all modern miracles should be revealed in our day.

Now that man hath wings he means to fly. Where the armies of Caesar could not go, where would- be world conquerors looked in vain, we may today venture in safety and in comfort.

Encouraged by this exhibition of aerial navigation, some may feel impelled to shake asunder the shackles of the earth.

By filling up the form at the end of booklet and sending the necessary financial contribution to the Secretary you may become a kinsman of the airman and a companion of the eagles!

Norfolk & Norwich Aero Club, Ltd.

Aero Display – Wednesday, May 30th, 1928

_____________________________________________________

Programme of Events

12.13 p.m – ARRIVAL OF H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES. Inspection of Club House and Machines.

12.30 p.m – Departure.

12.45 p.m – Lunch Interval.

JOY RIDING from 1 p.m. till dusk. 7/6 a flight.

2.0 p.m – AEROBATICS and upside-down flying by Mr. G. E. Lowdell, A.F.M., Instructor to the Suffolk and Eastern Counties Aeroplane Club; flying a Blackburn ” Bluebird ” aeroplane, Armstrong Siddeley ” Genet ” engine.

2.15 p.m – BALLOON BURSTING COMPETITION for Visiting Pilots. First, Second, and Third Prizes.

One small hydrogen-filled balloon released from the ground must be burst by collision with the aeroplane. Maximum time for each pilot, 5 minutes. The winner is the pilot who bursts his balloon in the shortest time.

3.0 p.m – MOCK AERIAL FIGHT.

A fast, single-seater machine will attack a heavier aeroplane.

3.15 p.m – SAFETY AEROPLANES.

A demonstration will be given of the Handley Page Automatic Slot Device, which, fitted to an aero-plane, renders flying safer by giving control while stalled. Loss of control by stalling near the ground is the cause of most flying accidents.

‘The aeroplane fitted with the slotted wings is a D.H. Moth kindly sent over the by De Havilland Aircraft Co., Ltd.

3.30 p.m – MODERN LIGHT AIRCRAFT.

Each available type of modern light aeroplane will file past the enclosures on the ground and then go up for a short demonstration flight.

The following machines will be shown:

New De Havilland Moth fitted with 100 h.p. D.H. Engine. Pilot Capt. Broad.
Avro-Avian fitted with Cirrus engine. Piloted by Mr. Brown.
Westland Widgeon fitted with Cirrus engine. Piloted by Mr. Penrose.
Blackburn Bluebird fitted with Genet engine. Piloted by Mr. A. M. Blake,
Parnell Imp. Piloted by Flight Lieut. Bonham Carter.

4.15 p.m. CRAZY FLYING.

A demonstration will be given of how a skilled pilot can break all recognised rules of flying.

4:30 p.m – AEROPLANE v CAR.

4:45 p.m – AERIAL GOLF COMPETITION for Visiting Pilots. First, Second, and Third Prizes.

Each competitor will be provided with three bags of flour which he must aim at the mark from his machine in flight, within five minutes of being given the word ” Go” on the ground. The pilot who gets one of his shots nearest the mark will be the winner.

Passengers are not allowed.

5.30 p.m – PARACHUTE DESCENT.

Descent of Major Sandbags by Parachute from Messrs. Boulton & Paul’s P.9 machine.

Parachute kindly loaned by the Irving Air Chute Co., Ltd., of Letchworth.

After the last event Mr. H. N. Holmes has kindly consented to present the prizes

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:

Click to see how to becomeMUSEUM MEMBER Click to see how to becomeMUSEUM VOLUNTEER Click to make aDONATION

Keep Up To Date

To keep up to date with further information, please keep an eye on our Social Media (see the Social Media buttons at the foot of this blog) or click on the button below to be notified by email of any upcoming changes by seeing the latest blog.