Hairyplane, your message reminds me of another Miles birthday party; one that I attended on 12 April 1986. It was the 50th anniversary of your very own Falcon G-AEEG. I was fortunate enough to be invited to fly down to the event held at Denham and then to fly in EEG as a passenger. The weather was absolutely awful, but we safely made it down from Baginton flying in a Fuji. The flight in EEG at Denham was unforgetable. Sadly it’s the only one of the various Miles types I’ve ever flown in out of 200+ different types of aircraft (mostly vintage) I’ve sampled as passenger.

I was delighted to be reunited with EEG at that party, as I had seen it years before as SE-AFN at Sywell and photographed it often later at Baginton. At the event we met up with Edward Eves who had operated ‘EEG for some years. I have some photos of him cutting a special birthday cake celabrating the aircraft’s birthday. This cake had beautiful icing featuring a picture of EEG. I recently copied one such photo to Julian T. but too late for his recent article about your machine. If you want a copy of that photo (not shown here) or any others then please PM me as I would be happy to let you have them for your files.

At that event I also took shots of EEG nose to nose with Monarch FLW just to contrast their canopy profiles. One such picture is attached here. I took a view of the cockpit interior of the Falcon after my flight, but only using available light, so its a little dark. I include it here so you can see what the interior was like then.

By the way I have a Falcon of my own! It’s contemporary with the build date of yours – but mine’s just a little smaller. It has a span of only about 8.25 ins so is approx 1/48th scale. It is all metal and chromed. It originated as a car mascot – see pictures attached. I love Miles types but this is probably as close as I’ll get to owning one!

Spey111 can you please describe the item you saw at at Berkshire? On one of my visits a guide showed me a portion of fuselage and claimed it to be Aerovan – it was in fact a metal section from a Marathon. Is there really even a small part of Aerovan there?

Albert Ross mentioned the continued existance of Major G-ASWH. In its early days this was based at Compton Abbas and I recall seeing it there and it visiting Yeovilton air days. Many years later it was under active restoration and its fuselage standing on its own u/c turned up at Coventry (Baginton) fully painted. Sadly it suffered from dyslexic treatment and was carrying the “registration” G-AWSH! So far as I recall, it moved on for continued work – I seem to recall Wales being mentioned but couldn’t confirm. I do have some photos of it as “WSH” somewhere.

So far as Minors go, nice to see a recent view of FIR and the progress Arthur has made since he last showed me his work on this venerable example.

Thanks for pointing everyone to this. Very atmospheric shots – Dave do you have any idea of by what year the yard was cleared?

Rearwin delight

For me the most enjoyable part of the day was the chance to see a certain immaculate Rearwin put through its paces – I’m sure those generous fuselage sides and tail prove a challenge in certain cross-wind conditions when turning onto the runway! The standard of its restoration is EXCELLENT – well done Melvyn. I did say hello to one forum member (Robbo?) but I’ve not had the pleasure of knowingly meeting others.