Where do we go next?

Cees.
keep me in mind if you happen to come across a control column or throttle box?! The ywould look great in front of My halifax panel

Sorry Peter,

Couldn’t resist. I have been doing some hangar flying. 😉

Cheers

Cees

My tasks for next year?

Make the gathering of wartime aircrew in July a huge success – hopefully supported by sponsorship to make it even more so.

Apart from that, enjoy my aviation!

My tasks on the T4 are to:

Replace the air intake ribs with proper, skinned ones (if my back allows me to lift them and if the ones from XD670 ever arrive in Scotland – (hello John!)).

Attach the u/c doors to keep the neighbours cat out.

Re-hinge the canopies so that they open from the correct (port side)!

Re-inflate the intake blanks (again) and find the leaks.

THEN, maybe I can start work on the instrument panels.

Best seasonal wishes,

Ian.

Exactly. Hence why I am intrigued that it is apparently being restored to fly. I would expect it to look somewhat like the Hurricane I saw being dug out of a field in Essex in 1978 – think the resemblance of mash to a potato and you’ve got about the right condition.

It may be that I am being cynical (I often am). But I am intrigued, at least partly because there doesn’t seem to be any info out there about what they started with…

Adrian

Quite possibly! I am intrigued, at least partly because I spent six years at school in the parish it crashed in, and frankly I want to know just how much was left afterwards!

Adrian
(off on one again)

Not alot! 😀

Cees.
keep me in mind if you happen to come across a control column or throttle box?! The ywould look great in front of My halifax panel

😀 😀 😀 😀

Ah, yes, looks like him.

Great question Kev,

And one I haven’t yet asked myself, but should have.

The flurry of 60th commemorations has gone with both Normandy and Arnhem visited this year.

Hiroshima? Should do it, but can’t see it somehow. Maybe this is the year for Belsen?

I’ll get back to you.

Moggy

Would that be this F/Lt Jimmy Stewart DFC? (And yes, he did get the Condor. It was the only German a/c he saw flying while he was in the air himself during the war – saw a couple of Fw190’s come straight over his head when he was on the run though…..).

Me thinx you are missing a smiley on V7497!!! 🙂

Quite possibly! I am intrigued, at least partly because I spent six years at school in the parish it crashed in, and frankly I want to know just how much was left afterwards!

Adrian
(off on one again)

2005 will be more of 2004 for me. More big shows, more small shows, more base visits, more opportunities to get the camera out. Thoroughly enjoyed last year, can’t wait for summer to kick in!

Ooooooooooh, I feel all faint with all these serious Aeroheads round me! (nearly said airheads… ooops!).

Er… down at the bottom edge of involvement in this forum I’ll be planting veg on my WW1 airfield allotment, finding a day free to take my girlfriend, a Box Brownie and a few rolls of 120 to Old Warden for some serious Old Photography and… and… oh fiddle, I know there was another thing! Ah well….

Adrian
(oh I know! I’m waiting to find out about the Mk1 Hurricane rebuilt following a crash from great height in 1940! – V7497)

Me thinx you are missing a smiley on V7497!!! 🙂

Cees.
keep me in mind if you happen to come across a control column or throttle box?! The ywould look great in front of My halifax panel

Hmm.
My to do list is easy.
Help get ou Lancaster ground running this summer and also try and help get FM212 down from her perch

Like Dave Homewood I really am thankful for this and other forums of this kind for helping to distract me from what was pretty much a bad year.

In this coming year I am looking forward to the completion of my multi-media CD-Rom on the 79th. Fighter Squadron and it’s release. I am also planning on getting to an airshow or two and maybe a nice vacation sometime in the Spring.

Beyond that the possibilities are endless, I’m sure there will be another project that demands all of my free time and I’ll start off on another interesting journey like the one that is now starting to wind down. I may even go to school, who knows! 😉

All of you have a great holiday and a bright and prosperous New Year, and thanks again for all of the support! 🙂

for me it’ll be pretty much business as usual in 2005…..
arranging some very interesting speakers for Oxfordshire Aviation Group(www.communigate.co.uk/oxford/oag) and continuing to travel as far and wide as I can experiencing the wonderful world of aviation in all it’s many forms.Have a great Xmas everyone and look forward to meeting some of you again in 2005

BTW…if you see a silver Skoda Octavia estate suitably zapped at an airfield near tap on the window and say “hello”…it could be me

Err… both… 😉

Cheers Steve. Mr Stewart sounds like a very interesting chap. Great story about Paris.

So, are you wondering now about the fun-run round the world? Or just about my sanity. haha

Hi Dave,

No, this Jimmy Stewart is an ex-609 Squadron chap who I met last year thanks to Snapper. A little bit about Jimmy’s background:

Joined the Territorial Army, and was on camp in August 1939 when he was mobilised. He didn’t return home for another six years. He soon decided to transfer to the RAF, and after his pilot training ended up being posted on to MSFU (Merchant Ship Fighter Unit), to fly Hurricanes off of the catapult ships. He was launched once off the coast of Spain to intercept a Fw200 Condor, I believe he shot it down, and he was then picked up after baling out.

Jimmy was then posted onto 609 Sqn flying Typhoons and was shot down over France in May 1944. He told his flight commander that he was baling out, and the reply was ‘have a nice time in Paris’. So Jimmy did. He spent a month in hiding with the Resistance, during which time he strolled the Parisian streets amongst the Germans, even having his photograph taken at the time by Resistance workers. One photograph shows Jimmy and two American airmen standing near a roadsign pointing to Luftwaffe General Paris – the photograph caption jokingly says they were going to ask him for an immediate posting to the UK!

Sadly, on July 8th 1944, Jimmy was captured, and interrogated in Fresnes prison by the Gestapo. He was later sent to Buchenwald concentration camp, and ended up in a PoW camp until his liberation in 1945.

Jimmy now lives in Canada, and attended Snapper’s memorial service in memory of Francois de Spirlet at Duxford last July, where I got talking to him. We were chatting about what the Typhoon had been like to fly (“Bloody big engine, but it’s a real pussycat when you get used to it…”), when I let slip that I was due to do a tailwheel course quite soon. Jimmy’s advice? “Always three point it son”. So I do. I’m certainly not going to disagree with advice given by a former Hurricane and Typhoon pilot. 🙂

Anyway, a BofB world tour run is just a mad suggestion.

Hmmm…. I wonder….

Well my primary goal for 2005 will now not be going ahead exactly as planned. I had intended to run the London Marathon to help raise funds for the Battle of Britain Monument, which will be unveiled on Victoria Embankment next summer. Unfortunately, my application was unsuccessful (100,000 applicants, only 45,000 places), and my attempt to get one of our running club’s places yesterday also failed. Guess it just wasn’t meant to be. However, all’s not lost, and I’m now looking at doing either the Great North Run or the Edinburgh Marathon; there’s less of a connection to the Battle of Britain with those than there would have been with the London, but hopefully I can still do something to help the Monument.

The other aviation and history related things in my plan for next year are:
1 – Clean 2/Lt Kenneth Wastell’s headstone, research his life and the circumstances around his death when he crashed into the church in St Ives, and write a piece about it for either FP or Aeroplane (if they’d be interested)
2 – Research the two names I’ve sponsored on the BoB Monument (just received some spine-tingling news about one; I now know where he is buried, and will shortly be in contact with people who knew him)
3 – I’d like to fly a veteran; would dearly love to take Jimmy Stewart up if he’s coming over to Legends this year, my way of saying thankyou.
4 – Get more tailwheel time, ideally on Cubs.
5 – Finally take my son flying with me. We did the Dragon Rapide last year, but I’ve yet to fly him myself.
6 – Trying to talk Jules into letting me go and do 25 hrs in Florida next summer. Negotiations are at an early stage…

And somehow I’ve got to try and fit work in there too. 🙁

Steve, some great plans there. I’m interested to hear more on what your research brings forth.

Just one thing that worries me though, isn’t Jimmy Stewart dead? Or is it another Jimmy Stewart you refer to?

As you seem to be a keen runner, and want to raise money with it, here’s a madcap suggestion. Perhaps you could do it on a massive scale by running a race in each country that contributed to the Battle of Britain. That would certainly raise the profile of your cause and get much media interest. It may seem far-fetched but if you got sponsorship for transfers, saqy from Nike or an airline, etc., it would raise a heck of a lot of awareness for the Battle of Britain Monument and the veterans. Perhaps a BBC ilm crew could go with you. They seem to do a lot of this sort of thing, the Brits. We’re always getting people passing trough on some interesting cause. The last ones I saw was a Brit who flew a glider from the UK to NZ last month, and two Brits who drove a Morris Oxford from Oxford UK to Oxford NZ stopping at all the Oxfords in between. Anyway, a BofB world tour run is just a mad suggestion.