VYSKOV MUSEUM CZECH REPUBLIC

The Vyskov museum is a private hobby, and hence it is not funded by the state or so. They only get some money from entrance fees and sometime a donation. It is only open during weekends, but that message is only stated on a piece of board, and only in the Czech language. Now, my Czech is a bit rusty 😀 and so I stood at the gate on a Friday afternoon, after lunch break. The only thing I understood from the writings on the wall was that the museum would open its gate at 1400 hrs, but nothing happened. After I waited for 20 minutes I saw someone come out of a shed and I whistled loudly. It turned out to be the owner of the museum and when he came to the gate we managed (through some broken English, German and a lot of hand and foot waving) to have some sort of a conversation. The result was that he opened his museum just for me, after which I had the entire museum for myself for the next three hours. A great afternoon!
Some of you might call it a crappy bunch of aircraft, but I think the guy made a great achievement in aquiring a disused airfield and a lot of aircraft which would otherwise probably have been scrapped or left to rot.
The same goes for the Zruc Air Park. Also a private venture, by mr. Tarantik and son. Some aircraft are open for the public, and you can sit in some cockpits. When I visited the museum last summer there stopped a bus full of American kids. They swarmed the field, climbing, pulling and kicking everything they could, fought each other away to get into the cockpit of the Let-37 Cmelak and started banging away on the controls; the elevators, ailerons and rudder banging and squeaking like hell. And the bus driver (from Germany) told us he was going to come there every week for the next couple of months and next summer….. Shame, as those kids wreck the aircraft and spoil the fun for visitors who are genuinly interested in aircraft museums.
On a lighter note, there were two stunningly beautiful blond-haired Czech girls dressed in stewardess costumes. In exchange for 20 crowns they show you around the Avia or some of the helicopters, while “explaining” the operation of the aircraft to you. You can sit in the cockpit -which is really nice- and they tell you how it all works. The only thing is -they carried their explanatory texts and how to pronounce them in English on a piece of paper, but they really haven’t a clue about what they’re saying. I asked a few questions, but she just looked blank at me with her blue eyes (which was a pleasure in itself, but that’s another story). Not to degrade their attempts to speak English, but I experienced it as funny. I saw it as an example that they are at least trying to accomodate tourists from other countries and in doing so, generate some extra money for the museum.
All in all, two great museums. Go there, if you can.

Tillerman.

Edit: I found a nice 5 minute movie of walking around in the Vyskov museum: http://www.flightlevel350.com/video_streaming.php?id=5541

It was very interesting to note the attitude adopted by the Czechs towards aircraft preservation, I got the impression the the Czech AF didn,t destroy anything but just offered it free of charge to anyone who wanted it and could collect it when they had finished with it (unlike the MOD), because everywhere we visited was “why display 1 when you can display 3, 4 or 5 of a type”. But most museums don,t appear to have much money to spend, in the case of Kbely (Free entry) none at all from the Air Force, it cost just 30 Krona to get into Vyskov (about 70p) but what a friendly bunch. We also visited ZRUC, which gave the impression it was one up from a scrappy (50p to get in) but at least they are trying really hard, open cockpits on most, very little HSE Faff and lots of touchy feely, just like the old days.
I would go back tommorow if I could.

GG

Yes, that’s the Frogfoot. Additionally, the bigger part of those 12 years between Boscombe and Vyskov were in operational service.

Vyskov is great, btw. While definately the wrong approach for actual preservation, i do like that graveyard-look in a museum. Another great museum if you’re into this style of displays is Lvov.

Anorak time… Isn’t the Frogfoot the one that was at Boscombe for ATI ’92? If so the passing 12 years have not been kind to the scheme…
Some line up of aircraft there though despite the weathering it is an impressive collectioon.

Powertoys

on the Microsoft website are are a set of tools that help spped up the resizing of pictures.

Go to the MS site and select the appropriate OS for your computer.

Powertoys, imageresizer.exe

Give it a go. It allows resizing simply selecting the pic and then doing a right click.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

The medium size works best.

regards

tc

Bert

I also visited Kbely on the same trip, which is a fantastic museum, the Prague Tech was also paid a visit but has just 5 aircraft and was closed on the day I was there.

Kbely rates as one of the best museums I have ever visited, and I,ve been to Pima, Duxford, & Hendon.

My top 3 are now Monino, Datanshang, and Madrid, Kbely was previously my #2

Any help with showing pics gratefully accepted, I saved them below the recommended size to post but they came out like that, what can I do to improve the attachments.

GG

Loads of hardware there. Looks like they need a bit of TLC. Thanks for posting it is nice to see what others have on their doorstep.

tc

Nice, but a bit blown up pics.
I can recommend two other Czech museums; Kbely airport museum, and the National Technical museum in Prague..has some very interesting planes in the collection

skybert