Fixter Pixie

The search is never over until you give up!

Several weeks ago i sent an email to the Fenland and West Norfolk aviation Museum as they had recovered Piper Colt G-ARNH from the last know location of the Pixie. I have today had a belated reply, unfortunately it does not look good for the Pixie.

`Hi Martin, sorry for the long delay in replying, what with getting the Museum open and bringing in a Spitfire replica ,a trip to Holland, its a been a bit hectic, now getting down to the Pixie, before we had a Museum, we had been recovering aircraft in the Fenland area for several years and having nowhere at that time to display the items we stored them in a farmers building at Chatteris, he also had an airstrip adjacent to the farm.
When we aquired the Museum and was removing our recovered items he mentioned that in another building he had a couple of airframes, one was the Colt G-ARNH the other being the Pixie, and asked if we wanted them, however both aircraft were in a pretty bad state, no wings, no engines etc, but at least the Colt looked the better of the two, so we took that.

Now for the bad news, the last I heard of the Pixie was that it was given away as a childrens plaything, and placed in a chaps garden for his kids to play in!, mind you there was very little of it left as I can remember just the very basic fuselage.

How the aircraft came to be at Chatteris I haven’t a clue, and certainly the Colt is not listed as crashing there or the Pixie as far as I can make out, that will possibly remain a mystery as unfortunately the owner of the farm has since passed away.
I hope that has helped you out with your research, not the best of news, but hope it helps.
Cheers for now Bill Welbourne, F&WNAM`..

I think that tracing the location that the Pixie moved to is going to be near impossible and chances are it has been long since disposed of but you never know!………………Martin

The building in the photo put up by Kartman, sorry but this is not of the same structure, the building we are looking for has 5 or 6 feet of blocks and then corrugated above.

Sorry for slight thread drift – I met Ray Fixter at Crowland/Banks Farm circa 1969 – I did a little gliding with the Perkins Club for a while before I joined the RAF,the power pilots were a very friendly lot.
The brand new Bocian 1E glider was like flying a space ship compared to the T31’s I had trained on at Spitalgate.
I learnt to drive on the club’s cute little Vinyard tractor powered by a Perkins (P2 ?) diesel and also an Austin A40 Somerset for retrieves.

Re the Fixer pixie, The only known photo of the remains of the plane is the main thing I want to address. According to the photographer it was taken at Nayland, after visiting Nayland myself and studying the buildings from the inside I conclude it was not taken there. The photographer is somehow mistaken. I plan to visit the other two possible places this week to try and astatine where the photo was taken.

Suggestions on the hanger being at Crowland might be borne out by the aerodrome information here, it certainly was there at some point:-

Having posted the following on the Ward Gnome/Elf thread, now the Fixter Pixie has a discrete thread it’s more appropriate here.

‘Vis a vis the location of the Fixter Pixie at the time of the photograph on the ABPic website, there might be a clue in the background. That appears to include a dismantled Aiglet Trainer, G-AMUI, which was registered to Mell-Air of Goxhill, Lincs between 1965 and 1984 (the photograph is said to have been taken in 1975), being recorded by the CAA as PWFU in the latter year. Subsequently G-AMUI was registered to Maureen & Allan Copse of Market Overton, Rutland. In Dave Peel’s ‘British Civil Aircraft Registers since 1919’ (1985) G-AMUI is noted as ‘stored’. Maybe discovering where G-AMUI was stored (and where it had been based prior to that) might help identify where the Fixter Pixie was and to where subsequently it went?’

Good thinking Kartman.I attach some more construction photos from the same series,which Chris Fixter passed to me last week.He is a personal friend and I met him when he wrote to Flypast asking for any info on the Ward Gnome,which his father had bought from Mick Ward.Chris h as been striving to acquire any material/aircraft etc in memory of his dad.I responded to the letter and have been buddies with Chis ever since.I built the 1/6th scale model of the Gnome for Chris as I had much material on this project which I gathered to include in my “Douglas Light Aero Engines” book. The Fixter Pixie had Volkswagen power and therefore did not feature in my work.Now I’m aiding him to fill in the gaps on the Pixie story which was his fathers creation but owes much to the Gnome in its construction etc The last prospect we have for its final destination is Chatteris, as a search of Nayland buildings yielded no possibility that the concrete blockwork/sheet metal structure in the photo of G-AXNY was at that location. but hopefully someone reading this specific Pixie thread will know more.
All this 3 photos therefore are copywright Chris Fixter Collection