Our Intrepid Roving Reporter Jan Etal brings us a show report from the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton Ontario

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If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

G-Dammit I forgot about this!

Oh Canada!! Great work there. I really enjoyed looking at this feature. Russell

@Jessie_C - Jessie,

Thanks for getting this one up in such a timely manner. It certainly was quite a show!

@raypalmer - Richard,

Thanks for having a look and it's too bad you missed the show. Most aircraft categories were so packed with entries, let alone people looking at them, that it was quite difficult to get pictures of the models.

@Siderius - Russell,

Thanks and I'm sure that you would have enjoyed the show. This being at the museum understandably has the most categories for aircraft of all scales (including 1:1). What I didn't mention in the write-up was this is one of the few shows that allows "paper models" and there were a number present. One example is:


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One interesting point to air enthusiasts is that the 1:1 Lancaster on the second page of this Feature is only one of two flying examples in the world. The museum has flown it at air shows and events for the last 24 years. Each winter the plane undergoes a thorough overhaul and you can see in the pictures how extensive this is. This year is different, the four mighty Packard Merlin 224 engines are nearing the end of their operating life and will need to be overhauled in their entirety. This costly operation ($500,000) must be done or the Lanc will be grounded by Transport Canada. You can find further information about this at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Web Site.

Cheers,
Jan

They've piled so much time and effort into that Bolingbroke, if ever an aircraft deserved 'broke' in its name...

I can't see why frankly, it's a footnote at best. The most significant contribution it made was becoming the beaufighter in a roundabout sort of way. All money that should have been saved to give Roush for the Merlin refit. It's a Lancaster for cripes sake. Restoring a bolingbroke seems rather silly when you have something so precious as a flying Lanc to care for.

It was a rather significant member of the Commonwealth air training plan though. Nearly every air gunner got their start in the old Boly. Besides which, they're tolerably rare. I think there's only one other one flying, and that one's disguised as a Blenheim over in the UK.

Pardon me people, but isn't the topic of this thread about the Hamilton clubs recent show!

Cheers,
Jan

For anyone that might be interested, I have recently had a complimentary Feature on the ground subjects at the show published on Armorama. You can find it HERE.

Cheers,
Jan