Yes Daz, pretty much exactly like that…

Charlie says he keeps the tails of his crashed models (as that’s the bit that usually survives) on his wall, presumably you cut out the in-between stage and keep the whole model on yours?
Er… dare we ask how long you’ve had the model… in it’s box… unflown… neglected… not allowed out into it’s element…?
I mean, I know the weather has been pretty poor lately up there but…
and I’m not calling you chicken or anything…
but as Charlie Drake said,
‘I know the secret son, and to you I’m going show it – if you want your boomerang to come back, then first you’ve got to throw it!’

Sooner or later you have to get out there and commit aviation!

Here’s a few more from my archives:
(And they’ve all flown!)

Yes, very nice CTD.
Nice models. Nice photos.
You are clearly happy with IC power to do a multi-engined model using that power and I admire the finish you produce. I don’t dare spend too much time on a model – or I would be too nervous about flying them.
I can’t get close to the photographic quality either but there are a few more of mine here. I choose the types less modelled and although I do occasionally join the ranks of the humdrum prefer to plough my own furrow.
I have toyed with producing an early B-17 like yours but am really working up to a nice big B-24 – I can feel it calling me!

Seems to me the TSR2 excelled in an area which was not mentioned in the original post, vis. that the eyes of the nation were on it as the next generation of ground-hugging attack aircraft and the population was stunned almost speechless by the government’s action in cancelling it and spending our money instead on an American F111. This was of course part of the ‘special relationship’ we have with the American nation which included all sorts of unequal deals such as the exchange of ‘secret’ data in which we gave USA the M52 and got… did we get anything? .. at all? right up to Tony Blair leaping out of his seat to support a warmongering (and scarcely intelligible) US president in attacking…. oh, what’s the point?!
So the TSR2, although only one of our many types to have suffered death at the hands of our own government it probably was the landmark at which the great public disappointmnt (apathy) began to infect the nation.

For anybody wanting more on the TSR2 and an article entitled ‘Wings clipped and cancelled’ the RAF Yearbook for 1976 the place to look.

To other matters, I see Concorde has been mentioned… a technological one-and-only certainly but did it ever make money as an overall concern or is the taxpayer still paying interest?

One notable type not yet mentioned is the Harrier which did so well in the Falklands escapade. That would have my vote, I mean I can’t think of another type that the Americans bought from us!

So here’s my list:

1. Spitfire (Goering asked his boss for some)
2. Mosquito (outstanding use of natural materials in all areas of conflict)
3. Harrier (first true VTOL and American license-building)
4. Canberra (Excellence and consequent longevity)
5. Vampire / Venom (first jet fighters)

Apologies to all for getting off the St Mawgan track, but your story PT reminded me of an occasion while cycling home from the east coast with a friend at the end of a camping trip. We ran out of daylight and decided that there was no way we were going to make it home. Just about had the energy to pitch the tent in a quiet corner near the by-road and bedded down completely unaware (due to darkness) of our position near the RAF. The reds chose that night to send a Bear over and a pair of Lightnings were scrambled. We were awoken by mind-numbing noise at about 1.30AM and out of the tent in seconds on pure adrenaline but the two pairs of afterburners already half a mile high overhead on a 45 degree climb out told the story. Took us a while to calm down!
I expect a lot of us have had that kind of thing happen in our youth.

G-AEYE

Hi jetflap,

Yes I’d be pretty sure that your photo is of the prototype. Not that I’m an expert, but John Sylvester does actually publish a photo of her from that side (shows how bad my memory is getting!) and states the time of the photo as being ‘after the war’. I think that some repainting was done after JSs photo which shows ‘EYE with large reg. lettering pre-war style on the underside of the wings and a racing number of 68 on the starboard tip. Between that photo and yours all the underside lettering has been painted out, the ‘cheat line’ has been filled in with a darker blue, the top of the fus and the fin have been painted white and the reg. letters from the fuselage sides have been moved to the fin.

In any case since the side windows are of equal size that would definitely make it one of the first five built because with Q25 (The numbering started at 20) the wing spars were spaced wider apart leading to an altered window pattern.

At the time of your photo it was in the ownership of W J Twitchell who had it at Luten from 1951 for six years before selling it on, when it moved to Cambridge. It may have ended its career at Cranfield, but JS only states that he last saw it there looking very sad minus some parts.

Harpenden Meteor

This one takes me back.
I was living at the time in Birch Way Harpenden about half a mile from the crash site. I didn’t get to see it although I was fairly sure it had been a crash somewhere on the East side of Aldwickbury private school. I only heard at school a couple of days later that it had indeed been a crash and that it was a meteor. Word was that the pilot stayed with his machine to steer it clear of the houses, but from my recollection of the sound and the speed it was going I wouldn’t be too confident of his surviving an ejection. There was also a grisly report that one of the kids first at the crash site had kicked the helmet of the pilot around like a football to find the head still in it! Such are young boys!
All I heard was a jet aircraft obviously flying Eastwards low and fast probably roughly parallel to Piggots Hill Lane, but by the time I got outside all was silent.

But bomb-bay doors? You’re not thinking of the Canberra that went down at Jersey Farm St. Albans soon after are you? I was a mile away from that one too as it crashed close to the school playing field. Jersey Farm is now a huge housing estate so the Canberra crash site is no more. Somebody must have found plenty of wreckage from both though surely. Small boys can’t have spirited it all away!?

In case anybody is getting the impression that I was developing a kind of Jinx on aircraft I am pleased to announce those are the only two!

Hey T C are you saying the actual Panshanger Proctors are with you at Great Oakley?!
Now if I could just get the okay to visit G-AFFD I could treat myself to a grand day out and do a big triangular trip! Pity I never got a PPL to do the trip in style!

For what little its worth on my one and only visit to the seaward end of St Mawgan I saw a couple of German F104s that did a beat up and landed. No idea of the date but probably in the 70s. Apart from that, just the Nimrods.