Drawing Tuesday - Science Museum

In the Flight Gallery (3rd floor), the little brown thing amid the black shapes caught my eye. The black shapes at the back are models of wings shapes for Concorde; the one in front is a free-fall model of the BAC221, 1/6th scale model, developed as part of the Concorde programme - the free-fall models were taken up by helicopter and released under radio control, to test the control responses and stability, and particularly the ability of the aircraft to recover from a spin.

The little brown thing is a 1955 model of what came to be known as the Hovercraft. one of Sir Christopher Cockerell's models. I knew the curves were going to be challenging, and had to try different views before finishing the main one -

For something completely different, I chose this -

The one-man seaplane dates to 1931, the "Pterodactyl" to 1921, and the tail on the right belongs to a Hurricane (1938; over 14,500 were produced up to 1944, and each took 10,300 working hours to make).

The seaplane introduced flush riveting -

- compare it with ordinary rivets -

The planes seemed to have more struts and wires every time I looked at them -

Apart from the low-level lighting, and - as in every museum, it seems - an unwatched video, with loud sound track, on loop, it was an interesting place for drawing - airplanes are wonderful machines, and it's in a museum you see the prototypes that didn't get developed further.

Mike drew the Vickers Vimy, 1919, which flew the Atlantic non-stop -

 and this needle-nosed plane -

 as well as the fatal flaw that caused the Comet to crash - metal fatigue around the rectangular windows -

Having drawn what she thought was a propeller-driven machine, Jo realised it had blades and was actually a helicopter -

Sue chose the flying boat and the hooded man - and crankshaft -

We agreed the dummies used for the helmets were strangely ghostly; Janet had encountered them too, as well as a tiny balloonist -

as well as a biplane -

 Mags took on the challenge of the foreshortening in this propeller -

 and then the many wires in this model -

and finished with something more relaxing, boomerangs -