Hello All,
I recently put up some photos of the BMW 801 at the Luftfahrt Museum Laatzen-Hannover, but there are some other really good exhibits at that museum I wanted to share as well.
Firstly, let me say that the museum and the people who work there are very nice. In fact, when they saw how focused on the Fw 190 A–8 they have there, one of the staff pulled up a ladder and encouraged me to take photos of the cockpit! That’s definitely a first.
As I mentioned, the Fw 190 A–8 & BMW 801 were my primary goal for visiting the museum. The museum says that this aircraft is a rebuild from original parts, so like many things I take what I see with a grain of salt. You’ll have to make your own opinion what parts are correct or not.
Here are some of the wide shots of the 190 Anton:
Oh, and besides letting me go to the cockpit, they also let me go behind the barriers to get a nice wide shot!
While I was back there, I just had to take a shot of the Me 109 G–2 as well:
To my delight, they have a ETC 501 rack and drop tank attached too! I didn’t waste the chance to document it as best as possible (I’ve only ever seen one before, at the Imperial War Museum in London, and back then my photography skills were terrible - so there was no way I’d let this pass by!):
Here are some tighter shots:
Oh yeah, I can’t forget about the cockpit after that lead in. Keep in mind these had to be handheld, so I took many hoping to get each different area in focus. One place I almost never see photos of in books/magazines is the area directly behind the pilot’s seat. Well, I fixed that!
There are a bunch more, but this gives you an idea what you’ll see if you check them out.
They also had a pilot’s seat separate from the plane:
Something I learned from seeing the seat out of the plane is that the lower lip where the pilot’s legs are has a nice radius to it. I guess Eduard’s seat bottom isn’t all that bad. I may have thinned mine a little too much…
There are a bunch more photos in the set; feel free to take a look and save any that might help you in modeling.
Best regards,
Mike