Saturday, August 04, 2012

Midland Air Museum

Shop shelvesAn oddball entry in my reviews of model shops - The Midland Air Museum on the outskirts of Coventry isn't only a model shop, it just has a very good one in the entrance.

Finding the "shop" isn't difficult - head for Coventry airport and it's beside the Vulcan bomber.

Inside, you can buy a ticket to look around the exhibits but you can just stay in the shop which is very well stocked with plastic kits of, unsurprisingly, aircraft plus some tanks and a few boats. The range is impressive with Airfix, Revell and a couple of more obscure makes on the shelves.

Opposite the kits is a Revell paint rack with a few other modelling bits and bobs. At one end of the room are die-cast planes'n'stuff including the souvenir goodies that every museum should have.

At the other end is a bookshop with new and second hand publications as well as a decent stock of old (read: current for the propeller powered planes you are probably building) prototype magazines. Beyond this, a cafe with home made cakes and yummy things.

If you do decide to pay a visit, the displays are excellent. As well as the full sized exhibits, masses of models are used to illustrate many of the educational aspects on show. If you are giving the history of a particular plane, why not use models rather than pictures ? It's not just plastic kit based planes either, there are quite a few mock-ups of proposed aircraft and wind tunnel models.

More photos of the fantastic range of exhibits on Flickr

Midland Air Museum website

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