'It has been my childhood dream'

Unique Hobbies

Like any other child, Sanjay Simha too would rush out of his home as soon as he heard a plane fly past.

As he grew up he could identify which plane it was and perhaps rattle out its features and what the particular aircraft was capable of. 

This passion grew and today Sanjay Simha has not only retained his interest in aircraft but has collected close to 201 aircraft models from across the world.

 Metrolife visited Sanjay’s mini-museum of aircraft to understand what sustains his passion and learn more about it.  

As Sanjay leads around his fleet of aircraft models, he very politely asks you not to touch anything and in the same breath, obliges your requests and takes you to each aircraft and talks about it in detail. Sanjay not only collects aircraft but travels across to some of the most inaccessible, restricted airbases across the world and shoots pictures of some of the rarest aircraft. And his aircraft are cut and crafted by experts to precision in terms of their size, colour and even the numbering — all on Sanjay’s insistence that nothing must go amiss. His collection also includes about 10,000 photographs of aircraft.
 
Get him talking and he could go on for hours together and soon you realise that Sanjay has spent his time, talent and resources in keeping his childhood passion alive. Then why didn’t he become a pilot? “That was what I set out to do and I wanted to be a fighter pilot but my health didn’t meet the required standards so I had to drop out but I hung on to planes through my collection," Sanjay tells Metrolife.

Sanjay’s museum is divided into different sections. The ‘pavilion slot’ houses miniatures models of ‘Russian fighters’, ‘Boeing’, ‘Airbus’, ‘Naval aviation’, ‘Western bombers’, ‘Rotary wing (helicopters)’, ‘American fighters’, Commercial airliners’ and his individuals models are the ‘Sukhoi Su-30K’ which are placed in a glass enclosure.  “It took about one year three months to assemble and paint this model. It has every detail that a ‘Su-30’ has, both externally and internally, but does not fly,” explains Sanjay.

Then there’s the ‘Su-34’ (latest in Russian Air Force). Talking very excitedly about the ‘Russian Mig-21’, Sanjay says, “This model’s nose cone extends like it does in the actual aircraft, when it flies supersonic (that is, faster than sound). The rear portion can be opened like they do in a real aircraft, whenever the engine needs servicing.”  Sanjay goes on to explain that the ‘Boeing B-29 Super Fortress’ ‘Enola Gay’ is the bomber which dropped the atom bomb (code named ‘Little Boy’) on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

Talking about the ‘Boeing V-22 Osprey’, Sanjay says, “This is a ‘tilt-rotor’ that takes off like a helicopter with rotors and later on, the rotors change direction and function like a propeller, thus reaching the speed at which a turbo-prop aircraft can fly,” and adds, “the advantage of this is it doesn’t need a runway to land or take off but can fly much faster than choppers.” He also has a ‘Boeing B-52H’, the biggest bomber in the world. “This is the only aircraft to have eight jet engines and is widely used in all conflicts by the Americans,” informs Sanjay.
 He points at the ‘AH-64 Apache’ and ‘Mi-35 Hind-D’ and says, “The Apache was used extensively by the US Army in Iraq and  Afghan conflicts, while the Russian equivalent ‘Mi-35’ was used by our own Indian Air Force in the Sri Lankan operations.”

What you can’t really miss is the Wright Brothers’ ‘Flyer’. Sanjay says, “This model was made from scratch and gifted to me by a Lt Colonel of the Indian Army, who is also an aero-modelling buff.”

It’s impossible to mention all the collections  but a tour of Sanjay’s aircraft models surely makes one enlightened.