Posts by Chris Rowland

Please don't clean it!

"Cleaning, repainting, polishing, etc. are normal when any craft is given the most dignified of final journeys: preservation as a museum craft. "

I hope not. the dirt is part of the history.

I was at the Smithsonian a few years ago; the craft that Rutan and Yeager flew round the world was there, complete with oil stains and broken wing tip. It looked like a plane that had flown round the world.

The Wright flyer had been "restored". It looked like a replica, perfect in every way, not at all like a plane that had been flying from sand dunes in half a gale, then blown over. The history had gone. Far more evocative was a fragment of a wing tip, found in the sand a few years ago.