Curator's Corner
Members bring interesting news about the FAST Collection
September 2007: Brian Luff "finds" something in the stores and the Volunteers turn it into a display
Brian Luff was delving into the many artefacts that are stored at G1 Trenchard House. He came up with an aircraft landing light. John Hardy repaired it and provided a purpose built 28 volt power supply to drive the light.
The next stage was to exhibit it.
Les Coleman offered to manufacture a wing section which would be attached to the wall above the landing gear. Les manufactured the wing section deep in his workshop at home. All 6ft long 4 ft wide and 2 ft of it was transported it to G1 Trenchard House ready for the next step.
The challenge was to lift the wing section safely and fix to the wall with minimal lifting gear. So Les with the help of Dave Ford, Malcombe Borrow, Maurice Shakespeare and Graham Rood a very light weight lifting block and tackle and two long struts hoisted the wing section it into position and whilst supported underneath by a scaffold tower the unit was secured to the wall and then wired up and tested.
After a lick of paint it is now a fully functioning display.
The pictures below show some of the steps in getting there.
June 2007: Craig Hicks picks the Whittle Jet Engine as his favourite object in the FAST collection
This month volunteer Craig Hicks has chosen the Whittle jet engine to go into curator's corner. He says "The reason for this is Sir Frank Whittle's jet engine transformed air travel and the whole of the aviation industry. It has allowed millions of people now to do something that was barely thinkable just 70 years ago. It also has very strong links with Farnborough, the R.A.E and Pyestock."
This engine was part of the collection transferred from QinetiQ to FAST and used to be in the entrance hall of the main Pyestock building. We don't think this engine was ever flown but it was certainly of the period and had been assembled by the Whittle engineers.
In addition, we have in the museum the "augmentor" [later called after burning] unit that was to be fitted behind the W2/700 and installed in the cancelled Miles M52 aircraft. This combination was likely to have been able to exceed the speed of sound [Mach 1] before the American Bell rocket powered aircraft.
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Version: 1.16 date: 17 May 2007