The SWA Model Warship display at Explosions Museum, Gosport on 8^th and 9^th August, 2009.

The weather on Saturday and Sunday was much better than at the Dockyard. We had the use of a portable pool in which to provide demonstrations for the public. I was joined by Ken Winter, Geoff Young, Alan Hall, Chris Hooper, Dave Reith, David McNair-Taylor, and Charles Davis.

Our display occupied the top half of the Conference Room and we had over 20 models on display. We also managed to keep up a reasonable display on the pool, including getting HMS Vanguard on for a short ‘excursion’. The smaller models were best suited to the Pool and I even managed to get the PT boat up on the plane (without exiting the Pool!)

Explosions Museum has been threatened with closure for some time now, and is now mainly open at weekends. Fortunately there appears to be a take over plan in place, involving the Trust that runs the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. The intention seems to be to create a group of the three Museums, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, the Submarine Museum in Gosport and Explosion Museum also in Gosport, and link them by Water Bus (already serves the Historic Dockyard and the Submarine Museum). This should improve visitor numbers which are usually low. Although not as good as in previous years, visitor numbers were up for the weekend.

John Lambert had a stand at the show and it was nice meeting him again.

I missed seeing the Reserve Collection this year as I could only do the Sunday but on Saturday the group were again able to see over the reserve collection which is not generally open to the public.

John Hawley.