Report on the Brodak Museum

[Robert Zambelli]

I must say it's coming along quite well.
We had a few tours during the Fly-In and people seemed impressed but we still have a ways to go.

I spent most of the week sorting, identifying, labeling and placing engines.

Regarding engine identification, I had a tremendous amount of help from Bill Mohrbacher and Dave Zwolak - two gents who REALLY know their engines.

We have on display over 260 different brands of engine from over 24 countries. Many more to come.
I estimate that when all is done, we should have well over 1,200 engines on display.

Bob Z.

[RknRusty]

Wow, thanks for all the hard work. A labor of love, I suppose. Hopefully Sparky or someone will make a video tour for those of us who can't make the trip. There's already a good movie tour of the Brodak warehouse and shipping operation, back in '15 or '16. Made by Charles Carter.

[Scott Richlen]

On Thursday we went over to the factory about 5 p.m. and not only got a very nice factory tour, but also a tour of the museum.

The museum is very impressive.  Even though it has a ways to go before it is finished and has a lot of stuff that has to be sorted through and then displayed, it is still very impressive.  John has gathered up a tremendous amount of material.

I've never seen so many different engines in my life!!  And the "old time" hobby shop is really neat.  I found myself looking, looking, looking at all the kits displayed.

The library that is being set up is going to be about the best you can find on model airplane literature (the only other one that I am aware of is on the top floor of the Air & Space Museum in D.C. and Brodak's will come close to rivaling that!)  For the guys that like to research old models, this is really going to be useful.  Hopefully, Bob can convince John to install a coin-fed copy machine in the library so we don't have people "borrowing" individual magazines or cutting stuff out of them.

I really have to commend Bob for all his hard work on this.  It is going to be terrific.  I can imagine there will be a lot of people hanging out in the museum and its library between events at next year's Fly-In.

Thanks again Bob!

Scott