Return of the Space Hoppers - More measures on dH Comet G-BDIX

Abstract

• In 2018 National Museums Scotland (NMS) set a development in motion at its National Museum of Flight (NMoF) with the aim to display the three outdoor aircraft, Avro Vulcan XM597, BAC 1-11 GAVMO and de Havilland Comet G-BDIX indoors, the airliners in a new, environmentally controlled hangar and the Vulcan in the existing Hangar 4. If the development had gone according to plan, all aircraft would have gone undercover by April this year. Due to planning permission issues and the pandemic the project got delayed, with the opening date of the new facility currently unknown. At Big Stuff 2013 I gave a presentation about short-term emergency measures we carried out on our dH Comet. At the time, we concentrated on making the passenger cabin watertight and rectify damage caused by water ingress and constant use by visitors. The delay in building a new hangar and thus protecting the outdoor aircraft from the harsh Scottish climate lead to the need to carry out more work on the outside of the aircraft. It also provided the opportunity to take a closer look at the work we carried out on the dH Comet in 2012/13. In July 2020 we carried out work on the upper fuselages of all three outdoor aircraft, sealing leaks with sealants and aluminium foil adhesive tape. In November of the same year we applied new bird spikes to the aircraft fins in an attempt to slow down the degradation of the aircraft skins by bird droppings. As the permanent assistant conservator post at the National Museum of Flight has been deleted in 2015, a temporary, six-months post was created in 2021. My new colleague Suncana Marochini and I started by removing and re-sealing the Comet’s passenger cabin windows whose seals had failed again over the last ten years. Retro space hoppers were taken out of retirement to act as temporary window blanks again. In the 1980s, bitumen based and aluminium foil adhesive tape had been applied to the upper surfaces of the wings to cover gaps and access hatches. We started to replace failing and missing tape with new aluminium tape. When the weather was not suitable to carry out work on the outside of the aircraft, we carried out conservation work on the interior of the dH Comet. Suncana removed mould from the Cockpit seats and corrosion beneath the windows caused by water ingress into the cockpit. In the passenger cabin seat pockets we restored by replacing worn or torn bungee cords. For the purpose of developing educated treatment proposals in the future we analysed paint samples of the exterior of the Comet. Details of that analysis are the topic of Suncana’s presentation. This year the museum recruited a fixed-term, two-year conservator post. Together we continue the external and internal work on the Comet, as well as carrying out corrosion treatment on the undercarriage legs of the Vulcan and BAC 1-11 as part of the preparation to move the aircraft into a new hangar, hopefully in the near future.