ROSSENDALE AVIATION SOCIETY

ROSSENDALE Aviation Society had yet another last minute change of plan when our scheduled speaker, Chris Berry, was unable to come due to a serious family illness.

We send our best wishes to Chris and his father, Glynn.

Fortunately we have several members who are ready to step up to the plate at short notice and this time Colin Duckworth filled the gap admirably with an excellent talk on UK Aviation Museums and Canada.

As a non-driver Colin certainly gets around the country, thanks largely to his long suffering wife, Judith.

Starting in Scotland, his talk covered a dozen of the UK’s many aviation museums and then finished with one they visited while on holiday in Canada.

Due in no small part to their large size, aircraft are very difficult and expensive to preserve and display and this was borne out in the variety of museums he spoke about.

At the Dumfries and Galloway museum all the exhibits were in a rather shabby state due to being kept outside.

Other museums, such as Elvington and Newark, are fortunate in having hangars to display their aircraft in, but this then leads to problems with crowding the exhibits together and also with providing suitable lighting for photography.

Even some of the larger museums, such as Cosford and Duxford, have had to resort to suspending many of their exhibits from the ceiling.

Despite these problems the museums generally do an excellent job of preserving our aviation heritage.

As a regular visitor to some of the museums, Colin was able to document the progress made over the years on several of these, such as the General Aircraft Monospar at Newark.

This has progressed from a kit of parts several years ago to being an almost complete airframe.

The UK has a large variety of museums and preservation centres holding an incredible array of aircraft types, many of which are totally unique.

In his visits to these twelve centres Colin photographed over 150 different types.

Many are quite common, the most popular in Colin’s show being the Hawker Hunter and Gloster Meteor.

Some are incomplete and damaged frames while others are still flying and looking as pristine as the day they left the factory.

All are a tribute to the skill and determination of the museums’ staff members, most of whom are unpaid volunteers.

Colin rounded off the evening with a visit to the Bomber Command Museum of Canada.

This is located at Nanton, about 70 miles south of Calgary, and is no longer near any airfields.

Despite this they have an impressive line-up of exhibits, including an Avro Lancaster which regularly does engine runs.

They also have many panels depicting wartime nose art.

Colin also was invited to see some Avro Ansons that they are restoring in an area that is not usually open to the public.

We would like to thank Colin for his extremely entertaining talk.

Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, December, 7 when Dave Ward of the Warton Heritage Group will talk about the early development on the Tornado.

We meet at 8pm at Haslingden Cricket Club and new members are always very welcome.