I can fly ...

Last week Tuesday we drove up to Lelystad to visit Aviodrome, the national aircraft history museum located at Lelystad "airport". The museum traces the history of flight here in the Netherlands from the very first balloon flight right through to space travel.

As you would expect there is a pretty big emphasis on Fokker and KLM ! The museum itself was a bit disappointing, not really very big and most of the aircraft on display were not open to walk into.

Lowlight was the cheesy and predictable 4D film, but the highlights were the KLM 747 and the lifesize reconstruction of the Schiphol arrival/departure terminal from 1928. Whilst onboard the 747 we were allowed a visit to the cockpit and had probably the only opportunity we will ever get to sit in business class !

There was also a display featuring the 1934 MacRobertson Air Race from London to Melbourne. This race became a significant factor in furthering the development of popular long distance air travel, with second and third places taken by passenger aircraft. Second place was won by the KLM DC-2 "Uiver".

The most dramatic part of the race was when the Uiver, after becoming hopelessly lost in a thunderstorm, ended up off course over Albury (!!) The local residents all responded en masse - the local power station signalled "Albury" to the plane by turning the town lights on and off; and the local radio station appealed to people with cars to line up on the racecourse, headlights shining, to light up a runway. The plane landed safely and the following morning was pulled out of the mud by the locals and went on to win the handicap section of the race. In gratitude, KLM made a large donation to the Albury hospital and the Mayor of Albury was awarded a title in Dutch nobility!

Alli xxx