As many know, Croydon Aerodrome in the 1920s & 30s was a cutting edge airport featuring the world’s first control tower, developing the concept of Air Traffic Control, and inventing the radio call “Mayday”. It was also the major aviation hub for London, and the gateway through...
Stow Maries Great War Aerodrome, near Maldon in Essex, has won £4.3m of National Lottery funding that will enable it to be transformed into a major visitor attraction. The near-complete example of a First World War aerodrome, untouched and largely forgotten for 60 years, was built in...
I didn’t know this until I happened to go for a Sunday walk in east London recently and stumbled on the plaque and signage – the very first flight made by a British aeroplane, with a British engine and a British pilot was made here by Alliott...
"To be of full value to its user, a parachute must inspire absolute and implicit confidence in its correct functioning." - Air Ministry Manual. A masterclass in under-statement!
I’ve been looking recently for references to the legendary WW2 pilot Douglas Bader in and around the Pas de Calais where he was shot down and captured in August 1941. (For some time, I’ve been encouraging the local tourism office in St. Omer to put together a...
RAF Cosford is still an operational airbase and most importantly, it’s the home of the Defence College of Aeronautical Engineering (DCAE), which sets the tone & style for the museum and gives it a unique atmosphere. It’s not that in Hangar 1, for example, you’ll find loads...
This looks like an interesting project, if it ever gets off the ground – see what I did there? This is a new concept ducted-fan vertical take-off (VTOL) aircraft that could be commonplace if it works as billed. The six-seat XTI TriFan 600, say the designers, “will...
I’ve got a special place in my heart for the Yorkshire Air Museum. I visited a lot of aircraft museums this summer (well… four!) and they’ve all got amazing exhibits and displays to talk about, but the Yorkshire Air Museum made me the happiest. There’s something special...
One of the key travel trends identified in this year’s World Travel Market – Global Trends Report, compiled by Euromonitor International is the return of supersonic air travel. Thirteen years after the demise of Concorde, a number of initiatives are underway to re-open the supersonic air travel...
The Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington, has been working with Microsoft to digitise the interiors of some of its aircraft. It means that visitors to the museum, and to the museum’s website, can wander through the cockpit and interiors on the Surface Pro tablets carried by...
The Air Museum at Duxford, one of the Imperial War Museum (IWM) sites, is probably the most important, ‘must-see’ aircraft museum in the UK. If you haven’t been, you really should, it is excellent. There are a number of things that set it apart. Firstly, its history....
This is a memorial I stumbled across outside a church in Nottinghamshire a year ago. There’s not a great deal of information on the memorial itself but thanks to the efforts of a number of people who have been diligently researching the loss of Lancaster W4270 with...
On 14 May, a Grumman EA-6B Prowler was delivered to the Hickory Aviation Museum in North Carolina from the US Marines Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 1 (VMAQ-1). The Prowler is an amazing aircraft, but not perhaps the prettiest (!) and not one seen often exhibited in aviation...
This Dreidecker (“triplane”) is a reproduction at the Luftwaffe Museum in Gatow. According to Wikipedia, 320 of these machines were built, but only three are thought to have survived WW1. Serial 528/17 was retained as a testbed by the Deutschen Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt (German Aviation Research Institute)...
This is a niche blog about technically-minded travel. It reflects my own interests in the mechanical, technical, historical, engineering, transport and military world.
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