I believe there has been an attempt at Shuttleworth, in recent years, to acquire as many of the major RAF trainers as possible but has there been any other specific collecting policy? I have always gained the impression that until recently most acquisitions (with the odd exception like the Sopwith Triplane) sort of happened almost by accident when aircraft were offered which happily seemed to fit in with the existing collection.

Got to agree that THT has put Shuttleworth on a much healthier financial footing and it is good to see them acquiring aircraft rather than disposing of them to make ends meet. It is also good to see that generally the concept of customer service has been embraced by the current collection staff.
I can remember a time (not so long ago) when the catering manager made the outside catering stands close down at evening shows because the manager had chosen to close the restaurant even though it had turned cold and many people still wanted to buy hot drinks. The exchanges with the outside caterers were blunt and very pointed and did little to enhance the image of Shuttleworth as a whole and definitely made the punters feel that their continued presence was unwelcome even though the edwardians were still flying.
Around the same time it was quite common for potential customers to be told to leave the shop because flying was about to end. I also witnessed people in the shop enquiring about their rooms which they had booked in the mansion who were told bluntly that they had come to the wrong place on site and were sent packing with little help to make sure that they got booked in and settled in their rooms. I am not talking about one off occurences here but regrettably something that used to happen on a regular basis and, in my eyes, did little to make people want to return to a second display.
I do understand that staff wanted to get home but when I worked at a race circuit I accepted that I was there for as long as there was something to keep the punters at the circuit because, generally speaking, there was money to be made while spectators were still around. Although I didn’t actually work for the circuit owners I also went out of my way on occassions to help the public with any enquiries or problems because I was acutely aware that the circuits customers were potentially my customers as well so it was in my interests to keep them happy and interested enough to want to return for another meeting.
Happily the poor customer service at OW seems largely to be a thing of the past and I suspect that THT also had an input into this improvement.

Arthritis in my knee as a result of an accident at work (which has now spread to my ankle as well) means I can’t stand up all day and also limits the distance I can walk in one go. As a result I also don’t walk as well as I used to and fall over if I get pushed about too much so I tend to avoid crowds. In view of the above standard admission for Legends is out of the question as it is too painful trying to stand up all day and too great a risk of getting injured or trampled if I get knocked over in the crowd.
A gold pass is way beyond my budget so sadly Legends is a no go as are many other displays as in many cases, apart from the risk of getting knocked over I simply can’t make it in a reasonable time from the car park to the display line, particularly carrying the extra weight of a much needed collapsible chair.
I tend to restrict my displays to Old Warden and some fly ins now although I was at Duxford yesterday but the weather, particularly the wind, meant it wasn’t as good as my first Legends arrivals day last year.
Sitting here today sorting out yesterdays pictures a part if me is really missing the fact that I missed out on seeing things like the 3 Buchons and only saw a moment of the Horsemen in close formation but I know that for all the above reasons a return trip today was out of the question. Very frustrating at times.

I agree that speculation is often counter productive in situations like this. The person who knows most about what happened is Anna Walker and even when you are sat there in the driving seat it is not always possible to be aware of exactly what caused a problem and as the pilot your main priority at the time must be to ensure that you and hopefully the aeroplane arrive back on terra firma as safely as possible.
The photos appear to show a every well executed landing and it is good to hear that SX336 is, given time, repairable.
I would be interested to know the cause of the incident once it has been properly investigated but in the meantime speculation seems pretty pointless.

The problems with the condition of XF708 go back a long way. In the early days of IWM there simply wasn’t enough hangar space at Duxford to house the entire collection and many aircraft were outside with a lot of them being parked on the base of the hangar which was blown up during filming for the Battle of Britain film.
Unfortunately spending so long outside took its toll on all those aircraft and some eventually came to be considered as unsafe including the Convair T-29 and a Varsity. XF708 survived the scrapman’s culls but we did loose some aircraft which have never been replaced in national collections – I don’t think any of our national collections have a Varsity – by all means let me know if I am wrong.
Some of the aircraft we lost clearly wouldn’t fit in with current IWM policy but their loss was still a great shame although at the time there seemed little alternative. Having survived those culls it would be very sad to see XF708 go now and I feel that Duxford is the right and proper place to keep her as the RAF Museum don’t appear to be interested in a MK3.
I understand that the management at IWM may prefer to spend the money it would cost to restore XF708 on other projects – not a view that I entirely agree with but at least there appears to be some sort of attempt to avoid her ending up with a scrappy. If someone does take her on I wish them all the luck in the world.
It appears Duxford now has a policy of trying to avoid taking on large aircraft and while I understand the problems of looking after large aircraft I do think this is a worrying trend. The large aircraft are equally as important to aviation history as smaller airframes and they should receive equal priority when it comes to presaervation particularly when we are talking of national collections who should , in theory, have the best facilities and staff availability to give large airframes the TLC they need to survive.

As others have said it looks like a deliberate and very well executed emergency landing with the best outcome possible ie a pilot who walked away and minimum damage to the aircraft. Bearing in mind the outcome of other emergency landings over the past week or so this one has had a comparatively happy outcome.
I hadn’t seen SX336 fly yet so look forward to the day when it is repaired and back in the air.
Sad to hear about the Shuttleworth Jungmann as well but again an undamaged pilot and a repairable aeroplane so all is comparatively well and we should count ourselves lucky that we have pilots with the skills to cope with the occassional failure that is likely to befall anything vintage and mechanical regardless of how well it is maintained.

First of all I have no vested interest as I have neither the money or space to take any cockpit BUT although it can be argued that Ebay gives everyone a chance to bid and reaches a lot of people which may create the potential for more bidders you really need to take a careful look at their fees.
The rises in commission charges over the past year mean that it is no longer viable for me to sell new diecasts etc on Ebay. It worked out that Ebay were taking 60% to 70% of my profit in fees and that was without taking into account the huge rise in rent for a basic Ebay shop.
I know there are still plenty of other sellers on there with new diecasts but I really don’t understand how they see it as viable. I used Ebay as a means to get back into collectablles full time hoping to build profits to pay to expand my stock. The new fee structures mean that it is almost impossible to grow a business at a reasonable rate so I pulled the plug and went with my own site which means more work to get the site publicised but I need less turnover and therefore less spare money to replace stock to get back the same profit because my monthly fees are massively reduced and I don’t pay any commission on sales.