MidlandAirMuseum.co.uk
Title
MIDLAND AIR MUSEUM
Description
About The Museum
Few of the 20 or so people that enrolled as founder members of the Midland Aircraft Preservation Society at it's inaugural meeting on Wednesday 24th May 1967, could have imagined how the Midland Air Museum they created a few years later would look over 30 years on. Now, the efforts of these and the members who followed them have resulted in one of the leading independent air museums in the UK. That first meeting, brought about by a series of adverts in the Coventry Evening Telegraph, took place in a hired room at The Nugget Inn in Coventry.
The Society, or M.A.P.S. as it became known, began amassing a collection of books, photographs, aircraft bits, engines and airframes and although the latter were generally small and easily stored there was an attempt, in December/January of 1967/1968, to save the second prototype Hawker Hunter from the scrapman at Solihull. With little resources and nowhere to put it the attempt was unsuccessful.
The first airframe acquired was the remains of a Parnall Pixie IIIa - a two seat low-powered aeroplane built for the Light Aeroplane Trials at Lympne where it met with some success. The Pixie remains in store until the time, money and space are available to rebuild it. Next came the wings of an H.M.14 Pou de Ciel - better known as the Flying Flea that created an aircraft homebuilding craze in 1935/1936. Armed with a copy of Henri Mignet's book le Sport de l'Air members set about building a fuselage in a borrowed garage and acquired wheels, a rudder and other components for their first aeroplane restoration.
Languages
English
