RAF Cosford Air Show Preparations Underway at RAF Cosford Museum

Transcript

00:00 I've worked for the museum now for just under 19 years and I've been manager here in the centre for 10 years.

00:05 We are the engineering or large object engineering team for the Royal Air Force Museum.

00:11 We have two public sites, one in North London and one here in the Midlands.

00:15 And this is a purpose-built building to look after all the large objects for both sites.

00:19 Any work that's required down at the London site, our team from here, we go down and do all the work down there as well.

00:26 People think it's quiet behind the scenes at a museum, it certainly is not in my job.

00:30 Airshow is just one of the many things that we prepare for throughout the year.

00:33 Not too many aeroplanes this year, only got three.

00:35 Typically in other years we've supported with eight, nine aeroplanes.

00:38 Number one is to make sure they look good.

00:41 We can't put them out there looking tatty, so we make sure we give them a nice clean.

00:44 But other things as well, if you're moving them you always want to check your undercarriages,

00:47 make sure the undercarriage is locked, you don't want a failure on the way down, tyre pressures, that sort of thing.

00:53 The ones on the 19 behind us, they're actually foam-filled.

00:56 It's one of the little tricks we do with historic aeroplanes.

00:58 Typically 18-year-old rubber, you don't necessarily want 80, 90 psi of pressure behind it.

01:03 Plus the fact if they're foam-filled we don't get a leak, so they're nice and solid.

01:07 Interestingly though, if you're foam-filling, it almost sounds like they're quite light, but they get incredibly heavy.

01:14 Typically we'll let the airfield get built, so that's all the marquees, all the vans and whatever else is coming on site to turn up.

01:20 And then on the Friday before the Sunday we'll move our aeroplanes into position.

01:24 Something like the Spitfire, we will use five.

01:26 We'll have one towing, an IC, then one on each wingtip and one on the tail.

01:31 And that's really as we're moving around, just to make sure people are keeping out of the way

01:34 and we're not going to have contact with any pirate vehicles or anything like that.

01:38 or anything like that.