Canadian War Plane Heritage Museum

A Special Treat Today From My Guest Blogger AKA My Husband Ralph!

I was in the best of both worlds this weekend. I have had a lifelong fascination with airplanes and by extension airplane models. I have built many airplane models in my youth and when Albert, my oldest brother, told me he was going to see a scale model show at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton it was just too tempting.
The talent of these modellers is just amazing. Their ages went from the youngest to the oldest. One older gentleman proudly showed off his models with electric motors added to spin the props and remotely controlled parts of a B24 Liberator. He said with a grin that he prefers his display models to have moving parts.

There were some large model ships that were made entirely of paper and until we were told what they were made of we had no idea that they weren’t plastic. The intricate details these talented people can come up with leaves me speechless sometimes…….like now. The space shuttle and the Bell X-1 models have to be seen to be believed. I only had a wide angle lens to capture the full size planes at the museum and I really wish I had another lens to capture more clearly the details of these 2 models (and others).

It was fun to look at these models with the backdrop of full size aircraft around us. The museum is preserving these aircraft as a tribute to the brave airmen who flew them in war and peacetime. My favourites would have to be the Avro Lancaster and the Supermarine Spitfire but also right up there are the Canadian designed and built CF 100 Canuck and the F86 Sabre. The Sabre has some of the skin covered with clear plastic so you can see the inner workings of an airplane. The Lancaster (102 foot wingspan by 69 feet long) was under maintenance and we could clearly see the framework holding the engines plus the wiring and hydraulics. It’s bomb bay is, in a word, massive.
The museum gift shop also has many remote control models hanging from its ceiling. There is a gorgeously modeled FW 190 that caught my eye, more than once. Then there is the CF 104 Starfighter at the entrance to the museum. I wouldn’t mind if it were in my backyard (I’d say front yard but Heather might object).
It was well worth the visit. It cost more in gas to get there and back than it did to get in, not too hard these days. See their website at: http://www.warplane.com for more information.  Your special guest blogger, Ralph.