She really should be at legends!
Somehow I don’t think that would get approval from the display director or the CAA now.

It’s a bit scratched.

A few tins of Humbrol and that will be as right as rain.

Seriously though there are only two obvious paths for this one now – either an artefact in a museum somewhere or the basis for another flyer.
As Mark12 said other English Channel wrecks are well on the way to being in the air again so I should think this one will be joining the queue – which will probably launch the original parts discussion all over again.

I think one of his Arrows is on display at PTR Racing in Horley/Gatwick. I had a look around it a few weeks ago, and its definitely a runner. The staff said it was on loan from a “local collector” who’s into planes and bikes too. Think I may have met the guy. some time last year a guy approached me whilst working on the Lightning and professed to have a mint runnable Jag in his garage/workshop near Haywards Heath. I took it with a pinch of salt, but perhaps he wasnt a b****ter after all 🙂

From what you have said I would say you almost certainly met Tony.
I haven’t seen him for a long time. I met him through a friend who still keeps in touch occassionally.
More here with a fleeting glimpse of Tony at th very end. http://repairbooks.co.uk/ducati/News/the-amazing-race-ducati-collection-of-tony-oneill/

Wouldn’t Pilot meet your needs?

I haven’t bought Pilot for years because it seemed to be specifically aimed at pilots by offering airtests and navigation articles.
It used to have the odd article that was of interest to the non – pilot enthusiast. I have still got a very old issue somewhere which had a great article about the emergence of F1 air racing in the UK. The same issue also had an article about the rebuild of Cosmic Wind G-ARUL “Ballerina”.
Perhaps I should take another look but if it is fulll of modern light aircraft like Vans then it is not for me.

I first bought Aeroplane Monthly in the 70’s around the time when it was relaunched. It seemed to contain a lot more articles about civilian light aircraft in those days and that was the main reason I bought it.
I also bought Flypast regularly for a long time but the emphasis there seemed to be on covering current museums and mainly military history which, to me, wasn’t so appealing.
I stopped buying any of the mags in the 80’s and only started a subscription to AM after being accosted by a young lady at Old Warden who offered me a 1/72 Corgi Hurricane for free if I took out a subscription. Ironically I knew the Hurricane that AM was givng away was virtually unobtainable as Corgi had sold out so I took it in to the model shop where I was working and sold it more than covering my first years subscription.
I must admit I have thought about cancelling many times as the mag doesn’t have the same appeal now that there is little about civili light aircraft in there but I don’t think Flypast caters for my specific interest very much either and if I don’t buy either of them I will have nothing to read at all.
I do appreciate that the reason for mainly military content is because that seems to be the biggest interest among enthusiasts and at the end of the day all mags have to target the bulk of their content at their main readership.

If this is Tony O’Neill who lives in England (the Arrows GP car makes me think it is as he had a lot of Arrows bits about 20 years ago) then this is the latest of his collections.
He is a friend of a friend who I knew for a short time in the late 80’s. His previous collections included Arrows GP cars (he drove a demonstration in an Arrows A11 turbo car at Lydden around 1989/90 with help from Arrows) and later he had a collection of Porsche 956/962 Group C sportscars and a Porsche 935 or two – not bad for someone whose early career was as a development engineer at Greeves motorcycles.

The RBL television campaign is typical of the sort of thing that makes me uncomfortable about giving to many of the large well known charities.
Most of them have been invaded by financial directors with big ideas and big budgets to match to fund television advertising and professional fund raisers who are often paid a commission for each person they persuade to sign up to a monthly donation and other big buck ideas.
I think it was the Daily Mail that recently claimed that if you sign up to donate a fiver a month (think it was a fiver – may have been more) to a charity which uses professional fund raisers then your first 12 monthly donations merely fund the commission paid to the fund raiser.
I presume the premise is that professional people raise more funds than volunteers did but the other side of the coin is that their wages siphons off a lot of the extra income so at the end of the day are the charities really getting a great deal more money to benefit their cause.
My aunt has raised money for a prominent national charity for 40+ years by working on stalls at public events as a volunteer. About 10 years ago the management appointed a new director with a background in the financial sector to oversee fund raising. In addition to stock supplied from the central charity source they used to sell locally donated new items and things like knitted items made by some of the volunteers at no cost to the charity. First thing the new regime did was ban the sale of anything not supplied from central stocks as the sale of donated items messed up their accounting procedures. They never could explain exactly how this new ruling benefitted the charity.
I know from experience of dealing with banks that the concept of getting something for free and selling it for a profit or doing a few hours of your work to benefit another person and them returning the favour is frowned upon because it can’t be recorded in black and white on a profit and loss account.

From the latest email –

Central to our goals, will be establishing a permanent Home Base for the Aircraft where we can provide easy public access and build up additional commercial activities. All this will also open doors for our Educational aspirations and enable expansion into organised visits from schools all around the country. Discussions on this continue, and we will bring you news of any developments just as soon as we can.
Ben

Thats good news and must open up more potential for increased income from memorabilia.
I think TwinOtter23 hit the nail on the head when he said he was one of 3 VOLUNTEERS who worked on the HLF funding project.
It seems to me that 558 has a great group of volunteers at the bottom level getting out there to man sales stands and sell memorabilia but as you go up the management scale everyone seems to be a paid professional and this is what costs a lot of money. Did anyone ever try to recruit suitably qualified / experienced volunteers for any of the management / admin posts or was it decided from the outset that the entire project management had to be run by full time paid staff?
If I have misunderstood the way 558 is run then fair enough but I am sure I am not alone in my perception.
Putting 558 back in the air was great achievement. I accept and understand that it is expensive to operate and is always likely to be a money pit but does it really need to be such a huge money pit in terms of wages paid to full time staff?