An aviation museum , air museum , or air and space museum is a museum exhibiting the history and artifacts of aviation . In addition to actual, replica or accurate reproduction aircraft , exhibits can include photographs , maps , models , dioramas , clothing and equipment used by aviators .
4-674: The Piper Aviation Museum is an aviation museum at the William T. Piper Memorial Airport in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania . It is focused on the history of the Piper Aircraft Corporation . Originally founded in the 1980s as a part of the Lock Haven Heisey Museum, for the first ten years the museum existed in the back of a tractor trailer. The museum purchased the former Piper Aircraft engineering building in late 1996. One of
8-645: The ground or fly some of them. Museums that do not fly their aircraft may have decided not to do so either because the aircraft are not in condition to fly or because they are considered too rare or valuable. Museums may fly their aircraft in air shows or other aviation related events, accepting the risk that flying them entails. Some museums have sets of periodicals, technical manuals, photographs and personal archives. These are often made available to aviation researchers for use in writing articles or books or to aircraft restoration specialists working on restoring an aircraft. This aerospace museum–related article
12-513: The history and artifacts of space exploration as well, illustrating the close association between aeronautics and astronautics . Many aviation museums concentrate on military or civil aviation, or on aviation history of a particular era, such as pioneer aviation or the succeeding "golden age" between the World Wars, aircraft of World War II or a specific type of aviation, such as gliding . Aviation museums may display their aircraft only on
16-429: The two first light aircraft to circumnavigate the globe, a PA-12 named The City of Angels , was donated in mid-2006 by the museum's historian, Harry P. Mutter. The museum opened additional exhibit space in 2022. Aviation museum Aviation museums vary in size from housing just one or two aircraft to hundreds. They may be owned by national, regional or local governments or be privately owned. Some museums address
#166833