Here’s one Caturday Felid item today: a short video of Jerry the Cat, who tends the de Havilland Aircraft Museum:
Just off junction 22 of the M25 by London Colney in Hertfordshire, there sits an almost hidden gem. Down a narrow lane, past a couple of houses and farm buildings and still, within earshot of articulated lorries and modern traffic thundering past, you’ll find the first aviation museum to open its doors in the UK waiting to be discovered.
. . . Easy to reach via the motorway network, affordable to enter and with plenty to see and do – there’s even a friendly house cat called Jerry who enjoys being made a fuss of by the visitors – the de Havilland Aircraft Museum should be on everyone’s radar as a place to visit in 2022, if you haven’t done so already.
The video:
A few planes for aircraft buffs (click to read the caption):
And heeeeere’s Jerry:
That looks like a fun place to visit. We recently went into Canada and found a lovely aviation museum, mostly filled with planes from WWII. In the same building were workshops for restoring the grand old machines, and you could get up close to see volunteers working on them. I loved the intimacy of the place.
May I ask, whereabouts in Canada? After a long career in aerospace including RAF service where I flew in what would now be museum pieces including the Lancaster and Shackleton to name just two, I love aviation museums and not so long ago came across some original design documentation for the Catalina Flying Boat which I donated to a museum which has one as an exhibit. I hope you do not mind the request.
Don’t mean to step on your question to Mark but if you are interested in aviation museums you might be interested in one located in Wichita, Kansas, said to be the Air Capital of the World. The Kansas Aviation Museum is located here and you can find it on line for more information.
Randall. Thanks for the suggestion. I believe I did visit that museum some time ago on a business trip to Wichita to what used to be Bendix Avionics. A long time US friend of mine who worked at Bendix Wichita once told me that Kansas was the Air Capital of the World because the early aviation pioneers realised that aviation was the fasted way to escape the plains, I didnt really understand this until my first visit when I saw first hand the extent of the farming and massive fields which went on forever it seemed.
Wichita was friendly, I remember that and the museum was impressive to put it mildly.
Your friend’s idea for the location might be true but I doubt it. If so the location might be the middle of Texas or Nebraska or many other places. I do not know what caused those early pioneers of aviation to concentrate on Wichita but they did. Beechcraft, Cessna, Stearman, Lear, Boeing and others. It works more like a magnet I think. New names like Textron and Spirit carry on and expand the fields of aviation today. Wichita has diversified some but it still does well in aviation and those old names are on the building that others work in today.
Since Jerry is on the far side of a limited internet connection, here’s a Caturdayism I sent him yesterday.
Californian WEITers (do we have a proper noun? Coynists, in deference to Darwinists?) will be able to monitor weather conditions over the next few days with this handy-dandy calibration chart of Hurricane Category versus common phenomena :
https://twitter.com/LiftForever67/status/1692628429420810247?s=20
(Does the image appear? Nope. You’ll have to click the link.)
What I want to know is why the MainStreamMedia are not reporting on the crowds of Trumpians lining the coasts of California trying to scare Hiliary away with choruses of “Lock Her Up!”
Maybe they’re not finding the joke so funny these days? Or just not very interested in group actions for the common good?
This is a really fine Caturday. De Havilland is a great and old aircraft company and it makes sense they would have the oldest Museum. The cat makes it even better. I think the Chipmunk was a trainer. Some of the best known in Canada are the DHC-2 Beaver and the DHC-3 Otter.
The first aeroplane I ever flew in was a DH Chipmunk, this when I was in training for the RAF. The pilot was a WWII Polish veteran who had flown hurricanes and was finishing off his distinguished career introducing us young chaps to the pleasure of flying and in particular aerobatics at which he was very proficient. I will always treasure that first flight and the moment I experienced the earth from on high and inverted for the first time and I was not sick then and have never ever suffered from air sickness, or any other kind of travel sickness for that matter which is fortunate because I have travelled a lot by air, sea and land.
I have flown in a number of DH aeroplanes from the Devon, Dove, Vampire T, Trident, 125 Business Jet, and the Nimrod. The 125, Trident and Nimrod were under the HS/ BAE umbrella.
I still love flying, but not commercially!