NASAM Round Up 2024 Q1

Introduction

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2024 has come and gone in a blur of activity across all the Teams at the Museum – a lot of graft has been fitted in when you look back over the year so, in time honoured tradition, we’re going to take a brief look at the Events and Happenings that have characterised our year here at NASAM. To keep the Blog space down a bit we’ll do this in four articles – one for each quarter of the year, appearing in the December and January blogs. This is Q1, with a selection of photos from each month.

That Was The Year That Was – January to March 2024 at NASAM.

The weeks between the last Public Open Days of the previous year and the first of the new year – timed to coincide with the school spring half term week, are usually the busiest of the year for the NASAM Volunteers. 2023 into 2024 was no different, with a lot of attention and effort being applied to the Winter Projects, the upkeep of the Museum buildings and the new collections that were to be open to the Public for the first time in the early part of the year. This year, with much to do, we were to be ready and open for the 17^th of February.

Two major projects had gathered momentum in ’23 and were soaking up a lot of Volunteer hours. The Royal Observer Corps (ROC) building was being refurbished completely, and all its contents had to be removed, catalogued, cleaned, tagged and arranged in the kind of order that would make sense to our visitors. Before that could happen, the whole building needed repainting on the inside. Shelves, walls ceilings and cabinets all needed a coat of white emulsion or gloss. The Paint Team had to split their time between ROC and the second major project in the display room, known as Room2, behind the shop where a similar exercise has been ongoing for a year. At the same time we ran an audit in the Bomber Command Museum – necessary to keep Museum records straight, and finished work on repainting and refitting the flag poles around the site. The Boulton and Paul P.6 aircraft got a good clean up, the Modelling team began work on the models needed for new displays elsewhere and everyone eyed the weather to see if the Valetta, which had been paint stripped and coated before the end of the ’23 season, could be continued.

(Photos) January at the Museum

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As January turned into February, the shop was restocked to prepare for the opening halfway through the month, the large collection of Civil Defence uniforms and related objects were cleaned and sorted in Room 2 making room for other wreckology displays to become more prominent – once the painting had been done. The Painters continued to grapple with the painting of the ROC innards, made more complicated by the displays and uniformed mannequins that had been added in the meantime, some selective paintwork on the Grasshopper glider in the B&P hangar and the gloss topcoat on the Luftwaffe Weg cabinets that the Chippies Team had newly built in the main hangar. In the workshop, the fuselage of the newly acquired Chipmunk was being assessed for engineering and, having been stored outside for several years, cleaned of graffiti and various biology. It was discovered that household cleaner and a scouring pad is better at this than real engineers plaint cleaner – and is a lot cheaper.

The Management Team had begun to build an Event schedule for the special open days across the year, and the events already booked were being published on our own website and across other Tourist sites, as well as on Facebook pages – no small job. Booked so far is the Easter Egg Hunt, the Morgan Owners Group and a groups of MG and Mustang owners – a good start. On the day before our opening more paint was being applied to the ROC building – now scheduled to open in March, the Grasshopper and the flagpoles and more graffiti was being removed from the Chipmunk.

(Photos) February at the Museum

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The Museum grounds received a lot of attention from the ‘Ground Force’ Team – with hedges being cut back, the entrance to the Adair Walk – soon to feature hugely in the Museum’s year, being clipped and cleared and the eternal battle with the local mole population being restarted. 150 Visitors and very pleasant weather joined us on the Saturday of the Grand Opening, the former enjoying access to many aircraft and to the Anderson Shelter Experience where they were selectively bombed by the Luftwaffe. The latter gave up on the Sunday when torrential rain deterred Visitors and made it impossible for several Volunteers to get to the Museum. Ho hum.

February rapidly became March with the ROC really beginning to take shape again prior to its public reopening in the third week of the month, the Chipmunk looking spiffy in its now polished black, red and white paintwork while attention turned to sprucing up its internals, and the various flagpoles around the site properly vertical again. The new air to air refuelling display in the Ken Wallis hall also was finished off with info boards and paintwork – a good job done. Weather dogged us again for the Morgan Owners Club visit when rain convinced only five owners to leave their Morgans in the garage and bring something more weather-proof to the Museum. Visits from MG owners and Mustang owners went down well – its always good to mix vintage cars with vintage aircraft, and more event bookings were added for Mini and MX5 owners to round off the first quarter of the year.

Graham

(Photos) March at the Museum

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Opening Days in December 2024

We are still open on the following days and still free to enter and free to park for the remainder of 2024.

We will be open on Friday the 27th and Saturday the 28th of December from 1000 thru to 1500.
Please note that not all areas may be open during these days.

Pete S

Would You Like To Help in 2025

There are a number of ways you can help the museum if you wish to do so, especially for a volunteer-run charity organisation such as the Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation Museum. You could become a Museum Member and if you wish a Volunteer Member by paying a small fee each year, or you could make a one-off donation to help with our running costs.

To become a Museum Member or a Volunteer Member, please click on the appropriate button below to see the details on our main website.

Click to see how to becomeMUSEUM MEMBER Click to see how to becomeMUSEUM VOLUNTEER