Open most days from July 18th to August 31st 2022 from 10am to 4pm (last entry 3pm) you will be able to visit the largest gathering of UK model aircraft from the historic to the ultra-modern you’re ever likely to witness. The National Centre at Buckminster is the venue and the exhibition is one of the focal points of the BMFA’s 2022 centenary celebrations.
Please check opening before travel Tel 0116 2441091 or manny@bmfa.org
The exhibition traces the fascinating progress of model flying from compressed air and rubber-powered models flown at the time Bleriot crossed the Channel to today’s gas turbine models and multi-rotors/drones with more computer power in the palm of your hand than Apollo 11 used to get model flyer Neil Armstrong to the Moon.
You’ll see original models by pioneers of the aviation industry like Sir Richard Fairey, whose Great West Aerodrome was a centre for pre-War model flying and is now London’s Heathrow Airport. Then there are World Championship winners, like Peter Watson’s F1C free-flight model that climbs faster than the Space Shuttle or Ken Morrissey’s extraordinary-looking World Record holding 214 mph control-line speed model. Another eye-opener is a Perspex-cased indoor duration model; the air in the box is 150 times heavier than the model! How about a radio-controlled pylon racer that pulls over 50G as it rounds the pylons? Scale models? There are plenty of them to admire too, and models that were icons of their era.
The exhibition spotlights the innovators as well as those who work in the background to keep the BMFA running efficiently to protect your model flying. We hope you will recognise some of those names and faces.
Some of the models will re-kindle memories of your own early model flying as they take you back to the magical smell of balsa cement and clear dope or of your first nervous stick-twitching. Whatever you fly, the Centenary Exhibition will be both a fascinating journey through time and an eye-opener as it spotlights the hundred year development of model flying. Be there; it’s your sport’s history.
