About two hours south of Washington DC is the Naval Air Test Center at NAS Patuxent River.  The base is home to the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum.  The most difficult part of the journey is actually getting into the museum parking lot because you approach on a divided highway which cannot be crossed at the museum entrance.  The museum itself is not on base property – it is just outside of it actually.  One must enter the base at the main gates going only far enough up the driveway to pull a U-turn and head back out to the highway.  The turn into the museum parking lot can then be negotiated from this side.

There is a nice collection of cockpit trainers (including an F-4 Phantom, a T-45 Goshawk, an A-7 Corsair II and an F-14 Tomcat) and other artifacts in the museum building.  There is a large collection of ejections seats which can provide invaluable reference information for the modellers in the crowd.  Mounted in the ceiling is an example of the Navy’s current UAV and there is a Northrop-Grumman mock-up of the UCAV-N X-47A Pegasus sitting in the corner of the display area.  A few examples of aircraft engines are also present.  Along the walls of the museum lobby are some very nice works of aviation art.

At the back of the building is the outdoor aircraft exhibition.  Here’s where the real gems are.  Outside one finds examples of many jets used by the US Navy.  Almost every displayed example in the collection spent some of its operational life at NAS Pax River in some test or training capacity.  Those planes having wings that can fold are generally displayed in the folded up manner.  This makes sense from a space point of view but is also a modeller’s dream because of the detail it allows visitors to see.  It has to be said that all of the aircraft on display are in very good condition.  This is to the credit of the maintenance folks who obviously take great pride in keeping the displays in top form.

The museum newsletter that I picked up during my visit indicates that a T-6 Texan II trainer will soon join the outdoor displays.

Anyone finding themselves anywhere in the vicinity of Washington, DC would not be disappointed if they took the short trip down to the NAS Pax River museum.