Day 4 of 5
Day 1 – Northolt Here
Day 2 – Duxford Here
Day 3 Pt1 – Church Fenton Here
Day 3 Pt2 – Elvington Here
A visit to the Aeroventure Museum in Doncaster, so it must be Sunday now.
A new addition to the museum is the forward fuselage of Jetstream T Mk1/XX477. This aircraft crashed shortly after take off from RAF Little Rissington on the 1st November 1974 when a fuel problem caused both engines to fail. The fuselage was used at Finningley as a Dominie Procedures Trainer. This accounts for the door opening just aft of the cockpit area and the outline of Dominie style windows over the Jetstream ones.
Brian
By: Rlangham - 31st March 2009 at 11:23
Superb collection, and as the others have said, if only they had some more undercover area!
By: Toddington Ted - 31st March 2009 at 09:30
The Jetstream!
Thanks so much for posting the photos, especially of the infamous Jetstream XX477. I remember seeing the hole it made in the Cotswold stone wall next to the road at Rissington all those years ago. The aircraft were new in service then and were replacing the Varsity but many Jetestreams were being stored at the time as we had a surfeit of multi-engined pilots at the time (so I was told). I then met up with the aircraft again at Finningley in 1986. Its a real survivor so I hope it can soon be put under cover and cleaned up for the public to look inside. A bit of “That Vulcan” money would provide so much for airframes like these but I won’t continue in that vein.
By: Roobarb - 30th March 2009 at 22:02
Excellent pictures as usual Brian. I thought the inside displays at Aeroventure were excellent when I visited a few years ago and the whole place is obviously brimming with enthusiasm. Unfortunately sights like the smashed canopy on the Gannet (left open to the weather) and the Bulldog fuselage below the F3 Lightning just make me think of Newark in “the bad old days” when it looked not unlike the average RAF station fire dump. If only money could have been used to help small enthusiast museums like this to house their exhibits under cover rather than fund an unsustainable project like the Vulcan, the future of these valuable exhibits would have been vastly improved. I’m not criticising the aims or achievements of the Aeroventure guys at all. As I said earlier their hangar exhibition is excellent and demonstrates how well the smaller museum can do and they could certainly teach the East Fortune Museum a few things…
I’m sure that given some national funding like the Vulcan was given would improve things massively. I don’t envy the guys trying to repaint Lightning XS897 outside and it would be a cheap shot to criticise its condition as we are lucky for it to have survived both Binbrooks scrap line and the Rossington fiasco. I wish these guys the very best of luck with their efforts. It just seems that such a small gesture as a handout for hangarage could do so much but it is so difficult to obtain from the heritage lottery yet all that money for a “Cold war education facility” (the white elephant Vulcan) has been chucked down the drain making it harder for everyone now. 😡
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March 30, 2009 at 8:52 pm