I must admit I haven’t contributed to a thread in months  partly because I was one of the victims of a particular nasty troll and also because I have had a lot to do after my partner passed away back in January. She had been unwell for a long time but her passing was very unexpected.
 Unfortunately the forum isn’t anything like as good as it used to be but I knew I had seen a photo of
G-AHZI somewhere which was what motivated me to help out on this one. Maybe there will be more decent threads where I can make a contribution in the future.    

There is an old thread here which includes the picture below.

https://www.key.aero/forum/historic-aviation/38374-spitfire-mk-iib-g-azhi   

But they are back again today although it is only one thread at the moment.

There are some photos on ABPIC of N90703, N1281, N73675 and N74841 landing at Berlin Templehoff. I did try to post a link but couldn’t get it to work although a search for the airline name or any of the reg nos above should find them . 

This helps a bit

RAF Wickenby Memorial Museum | Key Aero

If Elf and Safety had seen some of our working practices when the volunteers worked on the Mitchell and Lincoln at Southend in the 70s they would have been apoplectic.
I also remember the ex Channel Airways engineers that worked at the museum for a while putting me inside Anson VL348 when it was on jacks so that we could undo some of the bolts holding the centre section to the fuselage for the move to Newark. Once all the bolts were out they just told me to shuffle backwards a bit and a large hole in the floor appeared in front of me as they dropped the jacks from under the centre section. Don’t think that would be regarded as safe working now but I never came to any harm. 

Hello Mike  I helped Keith with moving the Proctor from Lavenham and took the photos when we moved it into the workshop at Gt Oakley. Really great to see that it coming along so well.  

In the 60’s that was a pretty normal approach to that end of the Southend runway. There were traffic lights to stop the traffic when something was landing but they didn’t seem to get used much until Channel Airways started operating jets.

There was  tree on the left hand side of the road in the picture which had got fairly tall by the late 60’s and it wasn’t unusual to see Carvairs lifting the starboard wing over it on finals. It was one of the haunts for the local spotters and if you stood at the fencing just to the left of the runway edge near the churchyard you could hear the noise from the turbulence behind landing aircraft.

I also remember standing there to watch Constellation N11SR depart just as it was getting dark. It thundered down the runway with flames coming from the turbochargers, seemed to barely scrape over the boundary fence and climbed gently away with the undercarriage appearing very reluctant to retract. I believe the Connie had been offered to Duxford for preservation but never made it there as the Connie was caught gun running shortly after visiting Southend.  

 Best story I ever heard about the road at that end of the runway was when Nigel Brendish had the Leisure Sport WW1 replicas at Harvestair for a while. The Fokker DR1 replica was fitted with gas guns which made all the right noises without actually firing anything.

Nigel was on finals in the DR1 when a milk float crossed his path. Nigel promptly lowered the nose a little and let loose at the unsuspecting milkman with the gas guns. I believe a complaint was made to tower but it all got sorted out amicably.