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Pictured below are some of the many documents and artifacts that are preserved by the National Model Aviation Museum.

By the end of 2008 Museum Staff hope to have finished the final report on the Collections Inventory they are in the process of taking. Officially, the inventory has two separate parts: Phase 1 where every single object in the Museum’s collection is written down and counted, and Phase 2 where that information is compared to the existing documentation. The final outcome will be a detailed report of what the Museum owns, the condition it is in, and where it is located; what the Museum physically possesses but does not have legal paperwork declaring ownership; and what is potentially missing. The report will help determine future preservation goals, space allocation, and serve as a starting point for researching the ownership of the artifacts with no known documentation.

The inventory, though, does have more immediate results, as staff are able to examine each artifact in detail and find problems that might not be visible at one glance.  Luckily, there have been very few issues so far. One of them, however, was the acid damage and battery corrosion in several of the transmitters. 

Acid damage on the bottom of a transmitter in the National Model Aviation Museum’s collections. The white, flaky particles on the battery and around it are a good indicator that an unwanted chemical process is happening.

 

Maria VanVreede, the Museum Registrar, recently took steps to mitigate current problems and prevent future damage by removing the corroded batteries from the transmitters, and cleaning the residue. While working with them she also took the opportunity to give them a good general cleaning.

 A staff person at the National Model Aviation Museum cleans a radio transmitter using a HEPA filtered vacuum.

The most frequently used method for removing dust and other particulate residue from an artifact is by vacuuming the dirt off instead of wiping it off.  Vacuuming removes the dust in such a way that the it does not scratch the artifact's surface, and the use of HEPA filters in the vacuum traps most potentially dangerous chemicals and dust in the vacuum rather then re-circulating them in the air.

It is important that the dust and harmful chemicals are cleaned into the vacuum so they do not re-circulate in the air. A skinny, flexible vacuum hose is used to get into hard places, like the inside of this stick assembly on a radio transmitter.

 A fine, soft, artist brush is used to help sweep the dust towards the vacuum tube.  Short, light strokes are used so the dust can not scratch the surface. 

 A skinner, flexible  vacuum hose extension was fitted to the end of the regular vacuum hose so the hose could reach into small places without damaging the artifact. Here the hose is used to vacuum inside the stick assembly of a transmitter.

MKV 04/02/2008