Fun at Hendon

Hendon

Hi Tony , shame that black 6 is in there !! should really be flying!! Well at least with Charlie Brown at the controls or some one as competent !!

Steve

Hi Tony , shame that black 6 is in there !! should really be flying!! Well at least with Charlie Brown at the controls or some one as competent !!

Steve

I tend to agree….DS would be my choice at the controls!

Very nice photos…

I tend to agree….DS would be my choice at the controls!

that makes three of us 🙁 breaks my heart to see her imprisoned in that mausoleum

Nice pics Rocketeer!
The Bof B hall ones seem to give contrasting views of the effect to which the glass wall has illuminated the aircraft. I guess it’s mostly the effects of flash, but the German types look as in the dark as they were before, but the Lysander is nicely lit. Which end of the hall is the glass wall, and in how much difference did you think it made?
Just a thought as it’d be nice to see types like the He111, Hurricane I and Bolingbroke appear out of the gloom in there…

T.T.

many thanx all….sadly TT the light does not penetrate that far down the museum!
sorry the phots are so small….never have much luck setting the right size….hopefully this of the lanc is better……
used my monopod and new Panasonic Lumix….it is tinsy, looks silly on the pod and is not bad for a point and shoot!

The B of B hall ones seem to give contrasting views of the effect to which the glass wall has illuminated the aircraft. I guess it’s mostly the effects of flash, but the German types look as in the dark as they were before, but the Lysander is nicely lit. Which end of the hall is the glass wall, and in how much difference did you think it made?

The glass wall is at the end that contains the Lysander, Sunderland and the Supermarine Seagull.

On a recent visit the contrast between the two ends of the B-of-B Hall couldn’t have been more marked; the glass end is superb, flooded with light, even on an overcast day in early January. The other end is a disgrace and little light from the glass end penetrates past the internal walls and the mezzanine floor area.

It has been a long while since I’ve visited the B-of-B Hall (pre glass wall) but the situation at the other end seems worse than ever. Notice for example the walls above the Bf110 in Rocketeer’s photograph; they were white but now have been clad in black, presumably for the benefit of the movie-screen suspended in front of them. So you’ve got black walls, black ceiling, a black floor, no windows, inadequate lighting and ‘displayed’ in the middle of this, dark camouflaged aircraft…..and every hour they turn all the lights off for twenty minutes to show the ‘film’ which few seemed to be interested in (but access was denied to anybody not watching)!

Now I know museums are keen to put things in ‘context’ and ‘educate’ those that visit them but it is not as if 99% of the population don’t have access to television, and most have access to Freeview or Sky…

…so why is it necessary to watch TV when the real, unique, not-available-elsewhere aircraft are invisible in the dark ten feet away!

(Sorry, didn’t mean that to turn into such a rant.)

For all the vast amount of knowledge displayed on these pages, it’s suprising how the effect of light on Museum artifacts is continually underestimated, or indeed just not understood at all.

Maybe so, but are you suggesting that the B-of-B Hall aircraft are being given special treatment by the RAF Museum and are being kept deliberately in the dark to preserve them?

If that were the case are you prepared to criticize the way all the other aircraft are displayed at Hendon (and Cosford) because the light is so much better in the other halls (also full of unique exhibits) and particularly in the brand-new Milestones building and even in the 100 year old Graham White hangar?

For all the vast amount of knowledge displayed on these pages, it’s suprising how the effect of light on Museum artifacts is continually underestimated, or indeed just not understood at all.

but the German types look as in the dark as they were before,

Before I read your comment I was just thinking how appropriate the lighting was for nightfighters!

You know. My mother used to get fixations.

Any mention of the town centre in Southport where she lived and she’d invariably say

“Have you seen the new paving near the bandstand? It looks really nice but these young swine on their skateboards are clattering up and down it and they’ll ruin it all”

Every time the Hendon Museum is mentioned, even when accompanied by a perfectly adequate shot of the Lancaster taken with a relatively simple camera, somebody has to start whining about the lighting. As if it mattered.

My Mum was 97.

What’s their excuse?

Moggy

Do what I did, take a torch.:)

Nice pic’s Tony.

Every time the Hendon Museum is mentioned, even when accompanied by a perfectly adequate shot of the Lancaster taken with a relatively simple camera, somebody has to start whining about the lighting. As if it mattered.

Where exactly did anybody mention photography? Or the lighting in the Bomber Hall for that matter?

The lighting in the B-of-B Hall at Hendon get mentioned a lot because it is bad, not because anybody has a fixation.

The lighting in the B-of-B Hall at Hendon get mentioned a lot because it is bad

That appears to be a matter of opinion, rather than fact

Before I read your comment I was just thinking how appropriate the lighting was for nightfighters!

Moggy

The Hendon museum

Just think how lucky you are at all to have these wonderful aeroplanes on show at all! lets face it they all could have been scrapped (to give my mum more than one saucepan) post war. So what if the lights not good.,,,, we can’t have everything.
I haven’t been since the place first opened. It seemed better then as fewer aeroplane made more of an impression on me.

Before I read your comment I was just thinking how appropriate the lighting was for nightfighters!

I presumed that you meant for night-fighters to operate in…..rather than be displayed in! 😀

That appears to be a matter of opinion, rather than fact…

While I agree my opinion doesn’t make it fact surely your statement ‘every time the Hendon Museum is mentioned…somebody has to start whining about the lighting’ would lead us both to believe that it is a commonly held view.

The accusation of bad lighting doesn’t get made about Airspace or The American Air Museum at Duxford (or any other part of the site for that matter); I haven’t noticed any large number of complaints about the lighting in Cosford or any other national collection for that matter either. Recent statements by the management at Hendon have indicated that they are aware of criticisms of the light levels in the B-of-B Hall and if they weren’t concerned about light levels can you offer an explanation for the expensive recent ‘improvement’ to the hall with the addition of a glass wall?

Fact? Maybe not, but if the opinion of many is that the lighting is bad surely it should be addressed.

Just think how lucky you are at all to have these wonderful aeroplanes on show at all! lets face it they all could have been scrapped (to give my mum more than one saucepan) post war. So what if the lights not good.,,,, we can’t have everything.
I haven’t been since the place first opened. It seemed better then as fewer aeroplane made more of an impression on me.

Here Here! I love the place and its treasures!

No pics of Handley Page’s finest?
Cees

Where exactly did anybody mention photography? Or the lighting in the Bomber Hall for that matter?

The lighting in the B-of-B Hall at Hendon get mentioned a lot because it is bad, not because anybody has a fixation.

The chap with the photographs mentioned the lighting. And the Bomber hall was mentioned because that’s where one of the photographs was taken.

Moggy says it all really….