In the main exhibition hall of the Museum’s Main Building, visitors can see nearly all types of aircraft – aeroplanes, including five amateur-built ones, gliders, motor gliders, and helicopters.
Estimated time for an individual visit – approximately 30–40 minutes.
To the left of the entrance stand two amateur-built aircraft – a yellow biplane, designed and built by Jerzy Ostrowski, and the mid-wing J-2 Polonez, designed by Jarosław Janowski and built by Andrzej Fiuk. Behind them stand two helicopters. The first is the SM-1, the first helicopter type produced in series in Poland at the WSK PZL Świdnik factory under licence from the Soviet Mil Mi-1. The start of production of these helicopters in 1956 marked the true beginning of the rotorcraft era in Polish aviation. The exhibited example, the third one produced, was operated by the Institute of Aviation in Warsaw, where it served for various flight tests. It was flown to the Museum by Ryszard Witkowski on 30 July 1973. Behind it stands the multi-purpose Mi-2 helicopter – the most widely produced rotorcraft in Poland – which was operated by the Voivodeship Police Headquarters in Wrocław.
Opposite it stands the prototype of the PZL-105 Flaming. It was intended to be the successor of the most widely produced aircraft of Polish design; however, it was not particularly successful and never entered series production. Next to it stands the Soviet two-seat Yakovlev Yak-17W, designed shortly after World War II – the first jet-powered aircraft in Poland, intended for converting pilots to this then-new type of propulsion. The exhibited example was handed over by the military to the Institute of Aviation in the late 1950s to prepare civilian pilots for the first flight of the first Polish jet aircraft, the TS-11 Iskra. Next to it stands the TS-8 Bies – a trainer aircraft designed by Tadeusz Sołtyk, on which generations of military pilots were trained. The metal low-wing monoplane with a yellow spinner is the PZL M-4 Tarpan, a prototype aerobatic trainer from the 1960s that never entered production due to the lack of a suitable engine.
Closest to the entrance hangs one of the most unusual gliders built in Poland – the tailless SZD-6X Nietoperz, designed in the early 1950s to test a drag-rudder control system using crocodile ailerons at the wingtips. The two-seat parasol-wing aircraft with a pusher propeller hanging behind its right wing is the PW-4 Pelikan motor glider, designed in the 1990s at the Faculty of Power and Aeronautical Engineering of the Warsaw University of Technology; it was never series-produced. By the left wing of the Nietoperz hangs the Scheibe SF-27A Zugvogel V, a German Standard Class competition sailplane designed in the 1960s. Behind the tail of the Nietoperz hangs an American ultralight aircraft, the Rand Robinson KR-2, built from a kit for self-assembly. The cream-and-navy biplane with an unconventional control system, lacking an elevator and ailerons, is the EC-3 Pou Plume. Both of these aircraft belonged to Silesian aviator Józef Gorszczyński. Next to the Pou Plume hangs the J-3 Eagle, another design by Jarosław Janowski, a development of the Polonez.
Beneath the ceiling of the adjacent hall hang replicas of aircraft from the pioneering era. The first is a hang glider by Otto Lilienthal – the first flying device on which its builder made documented flights in the 1890s. Next to it hangs a replica of the Blériot XI aeroplane, in which its designer Louis Blériot became the first person to fly across the English Channel in July 1909. It was also the first aircraft to appear over Kraków in 1910. Both replicas were built by Paweł Zołotow, one of the first Polish flight instructors.
The central position is occupied by the TS-11 Iskra – a two-seat jet trainer designed for military pilot training, created in the late 1950s by engineer Tadeusz Sołtyk. It was the first jet aircraft of Polish design. A total of 419 were produced. They served in the Polish Air Force for nearly 60 years, from 1964 to 2021. In front of the building entrance, visible through the glass, stand three examples in Polish markings. One of them belonged to the Air Force aerobatic team “Biało-Czerwone Iskry” (White-and-Red Sparks). The Iskra standing inside bears the colours of the only foreign operator of these aircraft – the Indian Air Force.
The remaining exhibits are designs by Edward Margański, MSc Eng. – the experimental aircraft Aeroem Małgosia II, on which an innovative control system was tested, and the EM-10 Bielik – the first jet-powered aircraft built in Poland by a private company. On a raised platform against the wall stands the remotely controlled, experimental flying model “Latacz” with electric propulsion, used for testing vertical take-off, transition to horizontal flight, and vertical landing.
On a raised platform by the opposite wall lies a full-scale mock-up of the Perun suborbital experimental rocket, built by the Polish company SpaceForest.
