World's 14 best aviation museums

ive no doubt all of these museums are worthy of world class listing, though its a bit hard to form an opinion without knowing the selction criteria.

in australia, its a bit hard to get excited about museums from overseas that ive never seen, and wont be seeing anytime soon .

For me the most informative museums in australia are the Point Cook RAAF museum, and the FAA museum at Nowra. the most entertaining museum is the temora flying museum, which about 4 times a year holds flying displays

With all do respect, those pics makes the place look like it's in shambles, disarray....almost like they've just showed their pieces into the building, how many of those can actually get up and close (well, you know what I mean) to while there, shouldn't only be important what you have, but also how you present your exhibits, that's an 'F'.....

Lucky13 said:

With all do respect, those pics makes the place look like it's in shambles, disarray....almost like they've just showed their pieces into the building, how many of those can actually get up and close (well, you know what I mean) to while there, shouldn't only be important what you have, but also how you present your exhibits, that's an 'F'.....

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It's really not as bad as the pics make it seem, and you can get close to most of them.

Aaah....cheers Chris! Have to say though, it does look like a mess!

One thing that I've always wondered, why hang up those priceless birds up in the ceiling, aren't they nervous that something will snap, or are they using much larger wires and attachments than needed? Maybe using structural reinforcements inside?

They use steel cables. They are not breaking.

Lucky13 said:

With all do respect, those pics makes the place look like it's in shambles, disarray....almost like they've just showed their pieces into the building, how many of those can actually get up and close (well, you know what I mean) to while there, shouldn't only be important what you have, but also how you present your exhibits, that's an 'F'.....

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You're right! They shove them in with a bulldozer! As a matter of fact it's NASM policy that visitors can keep any parts that fall off! I have a piece of twisted metal from the Enola Gay and some broken glass from the Gekko!

LMAO

I think we will all have our preferences and some of them are based on visits. Someone mentioned the EAA collection, and I have to say it is truly amazing. Pima has some real unique aircraft and a lot of them. Palm Springs does have a very nice museum, although with probate issues after Bob Pond's death, I am concerned about their future. Chino is a great museum, and often planes go between PSAM and POF.

It is difficult to make a determination on places like Monino (on my bucket list) without having seen them. Coming up with a top 10, top 100, or whatever number is going to cause dissent, as personal bias will always be part of any list.

I think it all depends on what you want to see. Some museums have OPEN COCKPIT days, which I love, but you would never see that at the Smithsonian, USAF or NMNA. Does that make them lesser museums? Not for me to say as it's all personal taste. The museum at Chino is one of my favorites because you see so many one-offs there. I like the odd-balls, what can I say? I also don't care much for jets, lack of prop = lack of character in most cases in my mind. Pima is another great museum, and it doesn't lack for space and can store many aircraft outside. Does the Smithsonian Annex display their aircraft to close together? I honestly never thought of it until Jan brought it up. Yes, if you compare it to Pima. They all have their merits.

Some museums have OPEN COCKPIT days, which I love, but you would never see that at the Smithsonian, USAF or NMNA. Does that make them lesser museums? Not for me to say as it's all personal taste.

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A museum I used to work for used to have open cockpit days and they proved enormously popular - as expected. We also had some airliners and a Vulcan outside, which we used to open up as well, which went down a treat, with the Vulcan being the biggest drawcard. problem was, when the British started getting strict with exposure to radiation from aircraft instruments, open cockpit days stopped. The Vulcan was still opened, but it was so popular that there was always a queue outside it and fights at the end of the day since we'd go to close the aircraft and there'd be complaints of how long people had been standing in the queue for. I used to have to empty the dehumidifier inside the flight deck once a month and as soon as I opened the entry ladder, almost everytime, out of nowhere a queue of people started to form - even when there was no one to be seen. It was like some kind of ESP "The Vulcan is Open!" that would cause people to appear from out of the blue... Pesky varmints...

It is difficult to make a determination on places like Monino

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it's a fantastic collection, but until very recently looked more like a grave yard, with the aircraft outdoors rotting away unkempt. When I went a number of years ago now admittedly, they had started repainting some of the exterior ones and had started to revamp the interior hangars. Apparently it looks pretty good now, but still resembles a big outdoors park of old disused airframes. A lot of the stuff have bits missing and has been junked. I saw rows of Yak-28s that had been in disasters, with ejection seats missing, scorched cowls and one had a burnt out cockpit with the ejection seat still in it...