WJ244The “old” Snetterton circuit was the best – when you could run down the Norwich straight (next to the A11) – the part now used for the market – as the later incarnation is tiny in comparison.
A friend of mine who used to race Minis remembers running flat out down the old Norwich Straight during a race and being overtaken by an E Type Jaguar that was on the A11.
He said the straight was so long there was time to wind up the window (which gave you an extra 500 rpm in a Mini as it decreased the wind resistance) and wind it down again to let some air in under braking at the far end.
Boreham has been mentioned as a test track but it was actually a race circuit from 1949 to 1953 and was known as “Britains fastest race circuit” but the meetings were not a success financially and Ford Motor company took it over as a testing ground.
Brands Hatch did have a grass airfield beside the A20 which was used by circuit manager John Webb and also by visiting aircraft mainly during Grand Prix meetings but I did see the occassional aircraft there on weekdays in the late 80’s / early 90’s, after John Webb had left, when I had a shop at the circuit.
It was basically an area of one of the car parks. The hospitality units on the straight facing the pits that used to be known as the Stewrt Centre have 2 “glasshouses” on the top, one of which was used as the control tower although it was a fair distance from the actual runway. In the past the other one has been used as a commentary point and also as the safety officers look out point during test days as well as an unofficial grandstand when we managed to sneak up there occassionally to watch the odd race.
WJ244Thanks for that. I wasn’t aware that the book existed so I am hoping my other half will get it for me for Xmas.
She keeps telling me she is considering growing wings as she says the sight of the edwardians flying at Old Warden makes me far more starry eyed than she can ever manage!
I actually emailed the US Museum about a Goodyear or Formula One racer in their collection but like I said my posts on this forum and elsewhere have since turned up the info I was after and photos appeared soon after on the airportsdata.com website.
WJ244On a positive note you did at least get the courtesy of a reply.
I emailed another fairly major US museum over a year ago to enquire about the history an air racer in their collection and also asked if they might have a photo that they could email back and I didn’t even get an acknowledgment.
Thanks to others (including an American gent who I have since learned is a well known author of air race books) who have seen my posts here and elsewhere and have taken the trouble to reply I now have a pretty clear idea of the history of the airframe I was researching and it’s relationship to others of the breed. I have also learnt of some interesting long term restorations of air racers which are under way but I won’t post details as I am not sure that the owners want the projects publicised and I think it is only fair that I respect their right to privacy.
WJ244I was fortunate enough to see Ray in his days as Red Arrows leader and witnessed some of his spectacular low passes in MH434 in the days when he flew her for Adrian Swire.
As others have already said both Ray and Mark are sorely missed.
WJ244Andy – If you drop Hornby an email I am sure they would be interested in the information. The only problem could be that models are often produced in China some time before they are actually released so if they have made the error it could already be too late.
I remember walking into the workshop of a British Touring Car Championship team. ASSUME NOTHING was painted on the wall in very large letters across one end of the preparation bays. It worked for them as they won the championship that year – maybe it should be adopted by all model / kit manufacturers and their researchers.
WJ244Good post, sums up things pretty well.
There is of course the option of keeping your money in the wallet.
Thanks! While I would have the consolation of knowing that each of the notes in my wallet was almost certainly entirely accurate (and was never likely to be dumped at a silly price due to over production) a collection of notes has has never had quite the same appeal as my diecast aircraft collection!
Seriously though it should also be remembered that any model can only accurately represent the subject at one particular moment in time.
I spent much of my career in the model trade selling specialist 1/43 metal / resin kits of model cars. In many sportscar races the cars could change during the course of a race with teams running several different sets of wheels and even changing body sections when cars were involved in accidents.
Le Mans was the race where biggest changes were likely to be noticed. I used to go to scrutineering and practice as well as the race. It wasn’t unusual for a car to appear at scrutineering on Tuesday virtually plain with just one or two major sponsors. During practice and even right up until race morning more and more sponsorship deals would be done so the car acquired more and more logos. When researching a particular car to make an accurate model using references produced by other people it could be hard to sort out the practice pictures from the race pictures.
A good example was the Porsche 956 stars and stripes which ran in 1986 which had the entire rear body painted to represent the stripes from the US flag which was involved in an accident a few hours after the start. The car got back to the pits and ran with a plain white rear body. The original was repaired and then put back on later in the race but had bits of duct tape and other marks from the crash and repairs so it was possible to model the car in 3 different versions all of which are correct.
I am sure similar things must happen with aircraft particularly during combat duty where things may change from one day to the next as a result of maintenance or repairs. It just makes life all the harder for the researchers.
WJ244Five years ago Corgi would have been owned by a company who seemed to know little about diecast models in general. They paid what seemed to be quite a bit of money to acquire a company that appeared to be producing healthy numbers of each new release and looked to be very viable.
Those involved in diecast retail knew that Corgi had been over producing for a long time (particularly on many of their vehicle ranges) and had been selling off over produced stock at very low prices. The stock had to be sold off or scrapped as Corgi no longer had their own warehousing so they had to pay rent on the storage space for unsold stock at a third party warehouse.
The people who managed Corgi at that time honestly believed that the more devout collectors wouldn’t notice that they could buy a model for around half price (or less in some cases) provided they were prepared to accept a model without a limited edition certificate and were also prepared to wait a few months for the over produced stock to get into the market.
Many collectors got wise to the way this worked and simply sat on their hands and kept their money in their pocket until the clearance stock came along. This meant fewer customers for each new release at the full retail price which meant more clearance stock to sell off cheap.
Many in the retail side felt it was only a matter of time before this situation would result in Corgi destroying their own market which was pretty much what happened.
The management sold out to new owners who, having taken stock of what they had bought, realised quite quickly that they hadn’t bought the money spinner they believed they had acquired. After battling on for a while the inevitable happened and the money ran out because sales of new releases weren’t paying the bills. Had it not been for Hornby it is quite likely that Corgi would no longer be with us.
Incidentally, the major players who were in Corgi management at the time when the over production problem was at its worst moved on to run airfix and the rest of that story is well known – Thanks again Hornby!
References can be difficult and in some cases contradictory when researching any colour scheme but there isn’t any excuse for getting things completely wrong. I am sure Hornby do consult quite widely when researching each model but it is inevitable that the occassional minor mistake creeps in particularly when the product is manufactured in a country where English is, at best, a second language.
I collect diecast because I don’t have the time and no longer have the eyesight to build from kits to what I regard as a good standard. I accept that diecast models will never be as perfect as a model built from a kit by a highly skilled modelmaker but I get far more pleasure from my diecasts (and accept that they do have some short comings) than I used to get from drawers full of unbuilt kits.
WJ244In the early days of Corgi Aviation Archive they were errors on models because the Chinese factories were misunderstanding instructions or interpreting photos and drawings in their own (often incorrect) way. Corgi eventually got round the problem by having a panel of people including enthusiasts who checked things over at the pre production stage.
I remember going to the British Toy and Hobby Fair in London many years ago and being shown a pre production sample of the forthcoming release of Sally B. I said it looked very nice but why did it have 4 checkered cowlings – a real conversation stopper that one. I explained the relevance of the single checkered cowling and they passed the details back to the factory avoiding a very costly error which would have killed sales.
Apparently they had sent the drawings to China showing the one checkered cowling and someone in the factory guessed that they had meant to show the checks on all 4 so had very kindly corrected the error on the drawings!
Sorry to see that problems are creeping in again. Corgi have been through 2 owners since the old panel system was used to vet models so maybe they need to look at getting some knowledgable enthusiasts on board again
WJ244Got to agree – the gliders have made a great place even better.
WJ244Thunderbird – I think we have got crossed somehwere.
The photo at post 2 would have been taken about 1968 as it first appeared in the Southend Standard newspaper around that time when they ran an article on Foulness. It shows TSR2 XR219 and what is almost certainly XF926 and caused a bit of a stir amongst the Southend spotters who had all believed, even then, that these treasures were long gone. We all tried to work out ways of getting to view them but the chances of getting anywhere near Foulness were pretty slim. I am fairly sure that even then this was said to be the last surviving Bristol 188 so it is likely that XF923 was either scrapped or more likely destroyed in explosives tests before 1968. The same picture seems to have been published much later in Aeroplane Monthly.
There was a fair bit of pressure to save both XF926 and XR219 but unfortunately the TSR2 never managed to escape and according to other threads on this forum suffered an undercarriage failure due to corossion and was subsequently scrapped at Foulness.
WJ244Yes it is the old Dutch minimoa, that lives at Dunstable. Dave
Would that be this one? Probably one of the most beautiful and elegant gliders ever made.
I nearly finished a Keilkraft flying model years ago but the multi spar wings were so delicate that they got damaged before I ever got them covered.
Apologies if the pictures aren’t up to the standard of many others here but I don’t have a digital SLR – yet so I am really pushing the limits of my current camera with flying shots.
WJ244I am pretty sure that the photo at post 2 first appeared in the Southend Standard newspaper in the late 60’s when they ran an article about Foulness.
The TSR2 is XR219 the only one to fly.
Even then I think there was only a single Bristol 188 there so the other one must have been used for tests quite soon after arrival. From memory the second one probably escaped to Cosford in the late 70’s / early 80’s. According to Wrecks and Relics it was definitely at Cosford by 1984.
WJ244Good show and plenty to see apart from the aircraft so it was good for families as well.
The only criticism (apart from the queue to get in) was that the fence along the display line was obstructed by vehicles and displays so it was a bit difficult to get a space to take photos. Only a comparatively small criticism and one that could easily be sorted for the future.
The airfield was under threat of closure. Is there any news on this?
WJ244If they have the dataplate it is very likely that it WILL be at Legends – eventually. Sorry couldn’t resist that one
WJ244I suspect that there is also some property consultants accounting behind this thinking.
A long time ago now I rented a shop. My rent was £7,500 a year with a rent review every 5 years. When the first review came along the landlord wanted to double the rent to £15,000 a year which I had no chance of affording.
I was told that there was formula that was used in the property management business to calculate rents that was partly based on what was alleged to be the market value for the property.
In the late 80’s/early 90’s the formula was based on the fact that market value of my shop doubled every 5 years so the rent doubled to reflect the new value. I was told that the landlord would be looking for £30,000 a year at the next increase and £60,000 a year ten years after that. On this basis the rent for that 600 square foot shop would now be £240,000 a year!
There seemed to be no allowance for a reduction in rent if the property value fell because “that would never happen”.
I explained that I could afford no more than a 10% rent increase at which point the landlord suggested that I vacate and hand back the lease. I did mange to sell the lease for peanuts but within a couple of years the shop was empty and has spent much of the last 20 years with no tenant and is now part of an NHS office!
Apparently it is better to leave the place empty then take a lower rent because accepting lower rent reduces the potential rental value in the future while the rent, in theory, continues to appreciate at the rates calculated from this property formula if the place remains empty.
You have to remember that we are talking here about the logic used by corporate accountants on huge salaries and bonuses – not ordinary people from the real world.
Is it any woonder so many small retailers have called it a day?
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