The Museum’s Curatorial and Restoration teams have exciting projects underway at both the Balboa Park location and the Gillespie Field Annex, including a complete build-out from scratch of a Hughes Racer made famous by Howard Hughes.

Curatorial Update

Reuben H. Fleet

The past couple of months have been rather quiet for the Curatorial team, allowing us time to touch up exhibits and begin construction on a couple of new docent stations that will ultimately be located around the Museum’s gallery floor. These will allow visitors to have instant answers for questions that may have arisen during their tour. Look for these new docent stations on your next visit.

We are in the process of upgrading the Reuben H. Fleet exhibit, which will be found adjacent to the Consolidated PT-1 “Trusty” near the west staircase to the administrative offices. The exhibit will be expanded to include new artifacts, models, and historical narratives with an activities timeline as well. The exhibit is targeted to debut in early August.

Restoration Update

Work progresses on the full-scale reproduction of a Hughes Racer at the Balboa Park location, perhaps not as quickly as we would hope, but building an authentic-looking museum reproduction to the quality standards we demand of ourselves, is a time consuming process. Ask for a docent tour of the restoration areas if you want to check out the racer for yourself. If you would like to make a donation to help cover the costs of this full-scale reproduction, click here. Type “HUGHES RACER” in the Additional Information box. 

The Hughes Racer under construction in the Museum's basement.

At Gillespie Field, the Boeing FB-5 project is coming along nicely. When finished, our reproduction will be the most complete example of the type seen anywhere in the country. While we have plans for this aircraft, they are crude micro-fiche type images and present great difficulty at times in interpreting numbers and symbols and other notations that appear upon the plans. Bit by bit however, our talented volunteers have worked through those road-blocks to a point where the fuselage is nearly complete. The same can be said for the massive upper wing which itself is nearing the point in time where it will be lowered to the floor from the mezzanine for final assembly and covering. Please visit our Gillespie Field Annex as well for a look at a real rising of the Phoenix.