Great pictures that brought back some memories. Hope you don’t mind if I add a couple more.
Firstly a slightly out of focus shot from Biggin Hill which must have been taken about 1966/7. No idea who took the photo but I have owned the print for over 40 years having bought it from our aircraft spotters club at school.

and one from Southend in about 1982 – not too long before the museum closed. The top turret was hired or loaned for a TV or film production and was never returned. Apparently when the museum made enquiries in an attempt to recover it no one had any recollection of what happened to it.
9089Z has also acquired a proper nose for this picture. When N7614C (now at Duxford) was in the UK to film a BOAC Boeing 747 promotional film it suffered from a problem with the nosewheel leg and the owners managed to borrow 9089Z’s noseleg for a while to complete the filming leaving 9089Z propped up on oil drums for a while. I think the new nose was sent as payment for the use of the noseleg.
After the BOAC filming was completed N7614C was effectively abandoned at Luton and was eventually passed on to Duxford for preservation.

9089Z was repainted a second time as HD368 before the Southend museum opened. During the repaint a fair bit of the underwing skin was replaced after removal of masses of birds nests and much of the airframe was stripped to bare metal (again) – a long and laborious task with comparatively few people using Ardrox and decorating paint scrapers and wire brushes.

It rings a bell from years ago that there were parts of another Hafner machine in store with the R2 either at Shuttleworth or before Shuttleworth acquired it but I have checked back through Veteran and Vintage aircraft and anything else I can think of and haven’t been able to find the reference. I am sure it wasn’t the rotary parachute so it is possible it was parts of R3.
Ring a bell with anyone else?

Only info I can find on the web is that the registration was cancelled in 1946 and that the last flight was allegedly in 1941 at RAE. There is also mention of it being re engined at RAE following a landing accident
I also found a report of the R2 that still survives being brought out of storage by Hafner post war and, as the R3 was far more successful than the R2 it would seem reasonable to assume that he would have stored the R3 as well assuming that he got it back from Farnborough.
You have found another obscure one to solve AA. Makes the mysteries of Biafran Ansons that never actually got to Biafra seem comparatively easy to solve!

Done a bit more digging in the museum newsletters which report that during the Summer of 1971 G-AVVO received the outer wings, rudder, tailplane and port engine from G-AVHU. I remember that VHU had no tailplane when I cut the fabric piece from it. I helped dismantle VVO for the trip to Newark probably during the 1972 school Summer holidays.
GPG was donated to the museum around April 1972 shortly before the museum opened in May 1972 and VHU had been gone for some time by then. I suspect the fuselage and inner wings which were still stood on the undercarriage were removed from the end of 33/15 at the same time as the remains of Viking G-AIKN and most of the Bristol Freighter sections from the main dump area. I am sure these were all gone by the time the museum opened as I spent part of the open day display guarding the dump which at that time consisted of little except some Air Canada Vanguard sections.
I don’t know what happened to the original outer wings and tailplane for VVO but it is likely they were dumped with the remains of VHU and were swapped because those from VHU were in better condition.
It would appear any report of the survival of VHU is greatly exaggerated!

That is really good news and I look forward to the next update on progress.

The Wings and Wheels theme does have the advantage of possibly appealing to two markets but I believe that many enthusiasts have overlapping interests anyway and many of those that would go to a mixed event would also be likely to go to a good individual air show or car event anyway.
I think it would be extremely difficult to arrange a combined car event with a car racing element unless it was held at a licenced race circuit simply because a race event would have to have a MSA licence and it would be difficult and expensive to acheive the safety standards needed to get a licence for a temporary circuit and you would also need trained race marshalls for flagging and to deal with any accidents. The rental costs to take over a licnced circuit for a weekend would make that option a complete non starter as well. A mixed event with high speed car demonstration runs make more sense from the costs angle but I doubt it would have the same attraction for many potential punters as an event featuring racing.
It is also worth bearing in mind that when I had a shop at Brands Hatch about 20 years ago the circuit discontinued their annual mixed racing and airshow weekend due to poor attendance. They also had to make South Bank a no go area to the public for the weekend to meet CAA rules on display aircraft overflying the crowd line which restricted the crowd numbers that the circuit was able to accommodate.
Events like Flying Legends are unique and attract people from all over the world. I doubt most would attend a second warbird show in the UK and the ordinary public generally expect more than “just a load of old fighters”.
Any modern airshow (with the exception of special places like Old Warden) needs a mix of modern and vintage types to attract the ordinary public. The public generally have a short attention span and huge expectations of the organisers ability to entertain them and even the best airshow will not hold their attention for an entire afternoon so you need other ground attractions to keep them amused/entertained hence the X factor celebrity appearance at RIAT.
At a time when money is short and petrol prices high I would not even contemplate trying to put on a new airshow but I take my hat off to anyone who manages to make one a success.