That big blue lawnmower wasn’t half making some noise today…;)
Not sure that the Ford Tractor Blue is correct though. I believe the postcard of Shuttleworth’s PRXI that I used as my primary colour reference may have faded and not be truly representative of the correct Agricultural Blue as applied to PL983 at Old Warden. However I believe it to be a better match than the glossy stuff it came in wearing…:D

Well I first met him two years ago and had the pleasure of showing him our Buchon in its film colours as Yellow 10 shortly after I’d overseen the application and done all the research for it. He said it was just like those he has back at Big Spring and confirmed that all the colours were correct. We’d just finished the other Buchon as well and he looked round that at the same time. It was indeed good to see him again and he is everything you have ever heard about him. Quite a character to say the least. If you do a search theres a link to the WIX website and some great pictures posted a couple of years ago from his hangars. He still has 9 Buchons, including the two seater and a couple of ground looped fuselages. The Spitfire IX and his last P51 are there as well as a couple of Catalinas, an Avenger, T6’s, Goose, I think I saw an Albatross as well. Great guy 🙂

The aircraft with the siamese exhausts sits in Connie Edwards hangar on his ranch at Big Spring, Texas. It’s still there, it hasn’t been sold with all the others and “heading for Germany”, and all the others are still there too. How do I know? Well, he showed me them on his camera today when I was chatting with him at Duxford:D:D:D

El Corpero is where the Buchons were finally based in service and largely operated out of there for the Spanish filming. Yes the question of the identity of this airframe has eluded many of us for many years as I’m sure Septic and others will testify. What really interests me is under what form of certification they operated on whilst in Spain. They were not registered with the “Air Registration Board” until they arrived in the UK, yet neither were they still on Spanish Military strength (despite being largely flown and maintained by the Spanish Air Force at this point). I asked the qustion about this and the identity of the Buchon that crashed some time ago when we painted up Yellow 10.

I look forward to hearing this weekend’s commentator “explain” to the airshow audience (which is said to largely be non-enthusiast for this one) that the impressive, sinister, reptilian skinned “German” aeroplane dominating the flightline and making a visual centrepiece (and no doubt significant impression on a generation of possible junior enthusiast children) is in fact “of minimal provenance of relevance to IWM’s remit and is not an accurate representation of its type of aircraft, meaning that the item’s significance to IWM’s collections is limited”.

What a clueless bunch…:mad:

I remember there was one “converted” to a BF109E lookalike and it was on display at H.A.M. at Southend on loan from the Battle of Britain display at Chilham Castle (?) along with a Hurricane and later a Spitfire. I suspect they ended up at Hawkinge. I think the Booker example was the one that went to Keith Fordyce at Torbay and then to Hawkinge. Long time ago the ’70’s but what a time to grow up 🙂

Yes the H+S reaction to a public splinter victim at DX doesn’t bare thinking about. 😮 All those Hi-viz jackets again and the headlines… “Children injured by WW2 bomber (lookalike-sort-of) in playground carnage impailment incident.” Oh and of course it will be on the sealed bid disposals bid list in about 5 years time when it gets rotten, despite it’s historic value “WWll Bomber, service record at Duxford, many missions, visible battle damage buyer collects. Must sell to make way for new H+S approved “Virtual” playground experience” Add to cart… 😀

Nice to see Brian smiling whilst “wearing a Bus” at Duxford, it wasn’t always that way…;)

DCW, Looks like you left early and missed the move of the Lysander from Building 66 to the ARC Hangar…;)