23 Jan 1945 Fw190 2 3 F/O B.M. Vassiliades (EJ660) 10 m W Gütersloh

Look at the last photo, see EJ660?

The info pasted above taken from this site:-

http://user.tninet.se/~ytm843e/victories.htm

Perhaps not quite what you wanted, Cees, but this is the results of “a good day down the scrapyard”. Circa 1980…. 😀

Wooden actors, wooden bombs and wooden aeroplanes!

Mind you, it occurs to me that if you used some of the flying footage from this and 633 Sqn, plus state of the art CGI, and various static Mosquitos, accurate studio mock ups etc, you could still end up with a half decent movie given a good enough script.

I read somewhere recently (BBC web site I think) an account by an “erk” of a Whitley being looped over RAF Hooton Park. That must have been a sight! 😮

Yes, I get the phone messages advising me that “as you know, someone in your household entered our prize draw a few weeks ago…”

As I live alone and don’t enter draws, I never listen to the rest of the message but presumably I have to give out personal details in order to receive the prize! Oh yeah…

Back to spade grips, you sometimes find the stainless steel BSA type sans column and mounted on wood as a desk ornament. You can usually pick them up at a cheaper price – me and my chum paid £225 for one two years ago.

It’s still an expensive hobby, though!

The eBay bargain of last week must have been a miniature “Spitfire” spade grip and column on a key ring. I’ve never seen one before and it looked more like a Hurricane column actually, but at around a fiver, I wish I’d bid on it. The ultimate accessory for the control column collector!

Hawker may be close! I can’t identify the type off hand but it has a generic Hawker look to it.

It’s a lovely piece and worth the winning bid in my opinion.

If I’d seen it, I would have bid on it. But you cannot spend all day, every day searching through eBay.

One of the faults of eBay, in my opinion, is that aeronautica tends to end up spread across many different categories (and descriptions), making it hard to cover everything.

A nice Christmas treat for SM639, whoever he is!

It wasn’t just us “experts” who felt a bit let down by the last episode.

My girlfriend has watched all four episodes and has enjoyed them, but even she felt cheated by the brief coverage given to the Canadian Lancaster.

A bit mean of the programme makers, don’t you think, to give only one crew member a chance to fly in the Lanc? A quick taxi around the back yard at East Kirkby for the rest was an anti-climax, for the other crew AND the viewers!

Looking back at it now, the whole show would have been far more memorable if they had had the veterans crew up together and fly one last “op”. The grand kids were just unnecessary fluff and got in the way of the real story.

Just my 2p’s worth, of course!

Here’s the best one in our collection. The panel, column, wheel and throttles are all original, just not necessarily from the same Lancaster!

We also have original panels from a Spitfire, Dakota, Rapide, Sea Hawk, Shackleton I and a few others, including the main panel from Saro Princess G-ALUN.