At the Air Museum

Delaney and David picked our fun today and it included a trip to the air museum out by the Bournemouth airport.  We decided to take the bus rather than a cab.  More adventure (and less cost).  We got to sit in the front of a double decker bus the whole way and had a great view.

A ride through the outskirts of town.  I'd say through Bournemouth, but the boundaries of boroughs, towns, etc is pretty fuzzy to me.  A lady at a clinic on the Talbot (main) campus said she didn't know any health clinics "all the way over there" (at the Landsdowne campus where Delaney lives).  "All the way over there" is literally 1.5 miles away.  Suffice it to say that we rode for about 45 minutes. 

The museum had more planes that I expected, although most of them were only cockpits, not entire planes.  The staff explained that the location used to be in a hanger on the grounds of the airport, but the owner booted them out and they had to move across the road into the open air.

The museum was designed as a hands on one.  You could climb into almost every display.

This is the Bournemouth airfield.  There are a number of regional flights that go out of here, particularly Ryan Air.  The museum was relocated to the very bottom of the picture in the center when you can see what look like rows to the south of the road. 

It was VERY close to the taxiway for the airport and had an observation deck where you could watch the runway.  This Ryan Air flight taxied by while we were there.

The hands on displays were cool, but the signage they provided was great!  Not only did it include the history of the individual plane that was on display (from manufacture to being decertified), it also included more general information about the type rating of that particular kind of plane.  I found this blurb about the Falklands/Malvinas war fascinating.  

A mobile airtraffic control tower.  They had displays of active radar inside.