Ok,we have aircraft galore dangling from cielings in many of our museums,we have a Lanc with it’s tail on a perch and we have various disected cokpit sections and walk-through airframes in various museums.However,these slightly odd ways of displaying an aircraft pale into insignificance when you clap eyes on the Shorts SC.1 in the Making the Modern World exhibition at the Science museum.
I remember this one sparked a bit of debate here a few months ago,so I thought i better post these pics as a seperate thread just in case the discussions get a bit lengthy!Sorry about the quality of the first pic,but it gives you ageneral idea of how the aircraft is posed.
By: DOUGHNUT - 22nd October 2003 at 13:07
Fairford 1987
By: dhfan - 21st October 2003 at 21:14
Originally posted by Flat 12×2
I thought it was 18 cyl.(6 per side) 36 pistons & 3 cranks
I stand corrected, shows how wrong you can be for so long.
That’s even sillier.
Dropping railway engines on kids, what a wonderful idea.
Guess who can’t stand kids.
Edit.
Prowling through Google just discovered there was a 9 cylinder version (and a 24 with four crankshafts!) so I wasn’t totally wrong.
By: Flood - 21st October 2003 at 18:15
Hello, good evening and welcome to the Keys Publishing Ltd trainspotters forum…
I only mentioned the trains coz I figured that they were bigger than the ‘planes and thought they might be out of the way if hung up! Now if one fell on a coachload of school kids…
Flood.
By: DOUGHNUT - 21st October 2003 at 17:49
XG900 in happier times, taken from Wroughton storage for an appearance at Fairford 1987. Can anybody remember why ?
Opps Too Big try again later!
By: Flat 12x2 - 21st October 2003 at 10:18
involving 9 cylinders, 18 pistons, 3 crankshafts
I thought it was 18 cyl.(6 per side) 36 pistons & 3 cranks
By: dhfan - 21st October 2003 at 02:42
It was a fascinating, if very silly, engine. Who would come up with a design involving 9 cylinders, 18 pistons, 3 crankshafts and a supercharger?
I’m reputed to be good at lateral thinking but the mind boggles at how he came up with that.
By: Flat 12x2 - 20th October 2003 at 19:53
The Deltic had engines from a JU86 I think…
The Deltic used an engine (x2) built by Napiers, it was originaly designed as a fast boat MTB engine. It used 3 cranks in a ‘delta’ formation, hence the name Deltic. Only the opposed-piston-2 stroke-diesel concept (which it used) had orgiinaly come from Junkers in 1930.
By: dhfan - 20th October 2003 at 17:15
Wassa flight lab?
The kids show and idiot presenters were in the middle of the aviation gallery. We had planned to be at the museum virtually all day but we were in a pub in Covent Garden by 2:30 so it’s not all bad.
Although I dislike aeroplanes being hung up, I’m prepared to make an exception for the Science Museum, although not for bolted to a wall. They have very little room, some extremely important/significant airframes and they couldn’t be pushed outside anyway. I think I’d actually prefer the S6b to be hung up out of harms way than accessible to be mauled by all and sundry.
Flood mentioned the train collection. I’m not interested in trains or railways, I’m interested in steam locomotives (and Deltics – what was the engine designer on?) and was looking forward to seeing Caerphilly Castle and various other bits I’d heard about. Railway section seemed now to be the size of a reasonable garage.
As I said, disappointing.
Went to the Natural History musem with a school trip thousands of years ago. Hated it, I’m not interested but I think I would have remembered a hanging whale. There was a Blue Whale but it just sort of laid there.
By: JDK - 19th October 2003 at 19:08
Hey flood,
I can remember that the Nat Hist museum had a (model – the real thing would be quite putrid…)whale hung up in the early 70s at least…
Actually the Science Museum’s aviation gallery is in some ways better than it was. It’s got an excellent model collection; they took out a load of aircraft so you could see the rest better – a relative achievement, we know; and a number of videos showing some very historic footage including the E28/39 in action at Farnborough in 1944.
The signboards in the Aeronautics are much better than you saw dhfan, you should’ve persisted past the flight lab. I interviewed Andrew Nahum the Aeronautics curator, many years ago now when these changes were made, and lost the argument with him about painting the roof dark blue… he was adiment that’s what it was going to be. Too bad as we know.
I’ve used a digital compact with tripod, and the results at RAFM Hendon were excellent. I’m off to try my luck at the Science Museum soon.
Thanks for posting the pics Ant. Yes, the Lockheed 10a is well hung (hem) relatively, and I did get some pics around the glass as I recall…
Cheers
By: Flood - 19th October 2003 at 02:13
Ha! I had visions of steam engines and locomotives dangling from beams at obscure angles, that was all. Went there a lot over the years, well it was cheap (read free!) and very, very interesting.
Can’t wait (alright – a sarcastic remark) to see the ceiling hanging dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum, and the strung up what-ever’s at the V&A (um, never did get there so don’t really know what is in there – probably don’t care now either!).
Still it’ll turn the kids into scientists, won’t it (and now a fatuous remark! Gosh.)?
Why can’t these designers look further than nursery school level?
Flood.
Aargh! Maybe it is to be featured in one of those interior decorating programs that I don’t watch – the place has been redeveloped to an original design by one of its neighbours (a near-reformed drug addict suffering psychedelic flashbacks: – imagine an Ozzy Osbourne-type but straight outta art college – via a cardboard box outside Kings Cross – with wide angle vision and a vague sense of what reality should be like when you have a tube of superglue and the contents of the toybox to display in a manner which Andy Warhol would enjoy with his soup… “Yeah, I’m seeing, like, cars right, like stacked on the wall, man, with, y’know king ‘planes bearing down on you and with a king spaceman, y’know, like asking you if you are right, like having a king good time, man. Sharrunnnn?”)
By: dhfan - 19th October 2003 at 01:16
No, it was a Saturday (admittedly) around the beginning of March.
I had wonderful memories of last time I went, aged I would guess around 15 or 16. It was a real Aladdin’s cave then, crammed full with something fascinating around every corner.
A real disappointment.
By: Ant.H - 19th October 2003 at 01:07
“Dhfan
The museum is now so aimed at kids with interactive features and words of one syllable we lost interest very quickly and left after a couple of hours. The flight gallery had a show for kids with a couple of idiot presenters every 40 minutes or so. Didn’t finish looking there either.”
I agree there is a fair amount of ‘kiddy content’,but overall it wasn’t too bad.At a guess,I would say that you went during a school holiday,which is when alot of museums run special ‘children’s workshops’ or whatever to keep them entertained for a while.I didn’t see much of that today,save one guy in a fake spacesuit in the space gallery making an ass of himself. 😀
By: dhfan - 19th October 2003 at 00:49
Originally posted by Flood
I wonder how the train collection is displayed?Flood.
Simple – most of it isn’t.
We went in March. I hadn’t been for 35 years or so and was really looking forward to it. This has some relevance to the Airspace thread as well. The museum is now so aimed at kids with interactive features and words of one syllable we lost interest very quickly and left after a couple of hours. The flight gallery had a show for kids with a couple of idiot presenters every 40 minutes or so. Didn’t finish looking there either.
Might try again in another 35 years if I’m still breathing.
Went to Syon Park years ago as well. Can’t really remember much but I wasn’t impressed with the stacked cars at the Science Museum. An example of “look how clever we are” rather than what’s the best way to display these exhibits.
By: Ant.H - 19th October 2003 at 00:34
…both the Lockheed and the 504 are conventionally dangled,and I have to say that the Lockheed has been very well done,it’s probably the least messed about with of all the suspended airframes I’ve seen.
By the way,the viewing balconies on eitehr side of the hall have glass/plastic panels which go up about 8ft,so you can’t really take decent pictures of stacked or dangled exhibits from above.Some interesting stuff in the display cabinets up there though,including an original Supermarine wind tunnel model of what became the Scimitar.
Here’s the Avro…
By: stringbag - 18th October 2003 at 23:56
My reaction:
😮
By: coanda - 18th October 2003 at 23:34
thats health and safety exec for ya……
coanda
By: Flood - 18th October 2003 at 23:08
As installation art goes… Shouldn’t it be in the Tate, or the National?
I wonder how the train collection is displayed?
Flood.
By: David Burke - 18th October 2003 at 22:48
Ant – I remember starting a debate about this machine months
ago ! Finally everyone can see her in her ‘glory’ It defies belief
that the public purse has been used to pay for this completely
bizarre idea.
By: JDK - 18th October 2003 at 22:18
You are really not going to like this…
Who hung up the Lockheed 10a at the Science Museun?
Who stacked a load of cars at the Science Museum?
Who do I suspect hung the Shorts SC1 at the Science Museum?
A company called ‘Unusual’ (they hang things. Popstars, celebrations, machinery)
Who’s hanging the aircraft at the new gallery at the RAF Museum?
Yup.
The good news is I do see an ‘Unusual’ painted white van at Shuttleworth for at least two hows. So though their brochure list the Lockheed 10a as a ‘turboprop’ someone there likes real aircraft.
Cheers
By: Flood - 18th October 2003 at 21:56
Like a fly on the wall…
Isn’t there something about being able to [I]touch[/] old aeroplanes on the Airspace thread, possibly something about you can’t do that because the unthinking public would damage the delicate airframe?
Just checking.
Loved the new adaption to obviously keep the cockpit canopy on whilst in flight… WHAT? Thats not part of the original design?
Horrendous. Thank goodness I don’t get out to museums much anymore if this is how exhibits are treated…
Flood.
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October 18, 2003 at 9:02 pm