The Collector

摘要

The rotorcraft industry is, like all of aviation, forward-looking. Unless you count the early days of Chinese bamboo-copters and Leonardo da Vinci's "aerial screw," it's also fairly young. But a lot has happened since Igor Sikorsky first coaxed the VS-300 into free flight 75 years ago, and as the adage goes, it's not the destination that counts-it's the journey. For Elfan Ap Rees, that journey began in 1958,18 years after Sikorsky's first helicopter flight. But what started as an aviation enthusiast's personal collection has grown unexpectedly into a valuable series of artifacts, records and more than 80 rotorcraft known as The Helicopter Museum. Funded by grants and supported by governments, manufacturers and volunteers, the museum in Weston-super-Mare, England (about 2.5 hr west of London), collects rotorcraft of historical significance from around the world. It restores them to like-new condition and displays them to chronicle the history of rotary-wing aviation. The Helicopter Museum has enough character to make even the most progressive technologist stop to appreciate how we got to where we are.