The indoor picture shows the Moth Minor and Hornet Moth which were oart of the Tony Haig Thomas Moth collection which were eventually all housed at the museum. Also shown is the Roe I Triplane Replica (loaned by NAPS I think) and the Humber Bleriot replica which is now at Coventry together with Skeeter XL811 which was also on loan from NAPS.
The Roe Triplane was a nightmare to put together. It came as a collection of parts and several boxes full of piano wire rigging with tensioners and no instructions. The Channel Airways engineers, with a bit of hinderance from me after school, had been trying to assemble it for a couple of days when I mentioned that the original was in the Science Museum. A phone call got permission for a visit to photograph and measure it. They wanted to take me as it was my idea but I had to go to school. The worst problem we had was that you could fit several rigging wires and hours or even days later find that they were the wrong ones when you tried to rig another part and found the remaining wires were all too short or too long. It was the biggest jigsaw puzzle I ever helped construct!
The Thunderstreak was sited on the grass area behind the CASA and the Gemini (which shouuld never have been outside as it was already suffering glue rot) was only parked there for a comparatively short time before it was attacked by vandals and subsequently dismantled. The Zero Six Nighclub ex London Transport RT bus can also be seen to the left of the T-33. The bus was used for transporting the promotions girls prior to the opening of the nightclub and was going to be used for a bus service to take nightclub punters to and from Southend. The service was either very short lived or never got off the ground and the bus soon disappeared.

G-INFO still shows the Mignet and the Jodel as registered to Bill Cole at Seddlescombe Nr Battle. Both have PFA c/ns and I am pretty sure he built the pair of them himself. According to G-Info both are VW powered.
The Mignet always looked nicely finished and well cared for when it was housed at the Southend Museum and was a credit to it’s owner.

The museum never actually owned G-AXPG which was and, it appears, still is owned by Bill Cole who loaned it to the museum and flew it occassionally. In the 70’s he lived at Hazeleigh Grange, Hazeleigh near Maldon, Essex and G-AXPG was kept there prior to moving to the museum along with the rest of his aircraft collection which included Jodel D9 G-AWFT and Leopoldoff F-PCZX / G-AYKS. I don’t know what happened to the others but he may well still own those as well. I am sure I covered this in another post on this forum.
The museum also had Mignet HM14 G-ADXS which was built by Mr Storey who displayed it for many years in his garage in Southend. His family loaned it to the museum and it moved on to Rebel Air Museum and then I think to Thameside Aviation Museum. I am sure it is still around but have lost track of its current home.

As others have said originality will always be a thorny issue but I think we all have to accept that in many cases major parts have to be replaced to maintain any mechanical device in working order. As long as any buyer knows the provenance and there is a record of what has been replaced there should be no problem.
This isn’t confined to aviation. I undeerstand that the steam loco Flying Scotsman has had most parts replaced during its lifetime including several replacement boilers but it is still Flying Scotsman.
Only this week I have been reading about a Porsche that was badly damaged in a fatal accident which killed a well known racing driver in the 50’s. It was “restored” many years later by grafting on the back half of the frame from a later Porsche and was raced in that form in Historic races for some time. It has now been restored again to the same appearance as the start of the race where it was involved in the fatal accident and inevitably this has meant replacement of much of the chassis to correct the work from the previous rebuild. It has also received an original but unused rear body as the one from the fatal accident was beyond repair. In my view the car now is better than the first rebuild using part of a later car but there will be those who argue that it no longer deserves to carry the original chassis plate as it incorporates a good deal of new material. There is no easy answer to this dilemma we just have to accept that all working machines have to have parts replaced if we want to continue to see them operating.
The other side of the coin is that as a result of the second rebuild there is now most of the back end of a mid/late 50’s Porsche sports racer going spare – now where is that chassis plate and the welding torch!

Re Dunstable Tigers. I got an aerotow behind G-AOEL in a K-13 about 1971 and at that time G-AKXS was sitting in the back of the hangar as a spares ship so it must have been one of the other two which got burnt out.
No real idea about the identities of Faith Hope and Gravity. The only other possibility that I could think of is that it could refer to 3 of the aircraft from The Blue Max but I am not so sure that they were still in the UK at that time.

The location of the aerial, shape of the canopy and slighty wavy edges to the wingtips suggest to me that someone took a mould from a model made from one of the old solid wood kits like Skybirds which were around in the 1940’s/50’s before Airfix came along.

Sorry tried a new way to post images. I think I have got it sorted now but if not please let me know and I will try again. I must have taken the DC-6 photo around 1979/80 but I remember nothing about it at all. It looks like it was parked on the far side of the apron opposite the old Aviation Traders hangar.
I think a group called Avions Ancien originally bought the Anson but she only travelled as far as Brenzett. I am sure another thread on the forum mentioned that she was at Hooton Park so lets hope she has a brighter future.

Old Fart your aerial picture must have been taken quite soon after the museum closed as the Beverley is all alone in the compound but there are no cars being stored there.. It definitely wasn’t taken prior to the opening as we always had aircraft outside and for many years after the museum opened there were no buildings on the other side of Aviation Way other than the Airport Hotel complex.
The layout of the outside aircraft changed a fair bit over the years. The CASA 2111, the Harvard, Gemini and the Fiat G46 were all inside when we first opened but as we got airworthy aircraft on loan which had to be kept inside some of the museums own aircraft got moved outside. Unfortunately being outside was the end for the Gemini as she was already suffering from the infamous Miles glue rot and a combinmation of the weather and a vandal attack meant she was a write off and was dismantled. The Anson G-AGPG was also attacked by vandals who slashed the underside fabric and the wind got inside and gradually balooned it off the rest of the rear fuselage. Unfortunately the Anson doesn’t seem to have fared much better since and I believe she is still in a bad way now.