Curator’s Notes

Curatorial is busy working on the new “Celebration of the End of WWII” exhibit, scheduled to premiere on 15 August, 2015. You can be assured that there will be artifacts on display for the first time in this area that are demonstrably the iconic epitome of the era. Archived materials and photographs will be presented to support the theme from the start, up to the end of the war and a generous timeline presentation will put the entire period into a clear perspective.

By time our members read this we will have removed our beautiful PT-22 Ryan primary trainer from the Gillespie Field annex and delivered it to the Del Mar Fairgrounds to be on display throughout the running of the County Fair. Be sure to look for it and the accompanying large museum graphic that will be positioned near the arena at entry gate number two when you visit the Fair.The Museum has been granted funds to create an exhibit on the life of aeronautical pioneer and glider advocate, John J. Montgomery. Montgomery, as many locals know, made the initial flights in his hand fabricated kites off the hills of Otay Mesa. He explored the realm of glider flight for nearly 40 years before succumbing to injuries he sustained in an accident in 1911. His name lives on in San Diego where the Kearny Mesa area airport was named in his honor.

Restoration Notes Work continues on our two major projects, at times more slowly than we might like, but steady nonetheless. The Howard Hughes H-1 Racer, the Balboa Park project, has seen good progress on the fuselage construction over the past few months with the sound of rivet guns reverberating off the basement walls, as we see the cockpit area take shape along with the area rearward toward the tail feathers.

At Gillespie Field, the upper wing of our 1927 Boeing FB-5 will soon have the ailerons attached and the last plywood leading edges applied in preparation for fabric covering. This work is intensely laborious and with the need to fabricate so many pieces it is, not surprisingly, only slowly proceeding. The fuselage work continues on with not much more to report than we did for the last newsletter. Here too, it has required untold hours to machine the attach fittings for wings and landing gear as well as for the numerous pulleys used for the cables that operate the control surfaces. Robert McClure, who heads up the machine shop in the main Museum, has just completed building two .30 caliber machine guns (non-operational ) that will soon be mounted in the FB-5 cockpit, providing a level of authenticity rarely seen this type of reproduction. Building museum reproductions is not simple but the results of the struggle are always enormously rewarding and we look forward to someday soon reporting on its completion.