What’s a straw man? Or, as Twin Otter suggested, a straw woman?

Re the point someone made about contacting the local firearms licencing officer to make him aware of the collection, one of the people wrongly raided was a licenced firearms dealer, can’t say they weren’t aware of him.

I can’t go, I’ll be at Newark.

Where can I buy a transporter like Captain Kirk’s?

The F-84 was gifted by the Belgian government to the HAM at Southend. There is no input from the USAFM loan program in this machine. Since the late 1980’s it hasn’t seen the light of day -one museum with a strong relevance to the type in the U.K enquired about it but the loan restrictions were somewhat draconian . Hence it still sits mouldering.

Regards Javelins -if I recall correctly both cockpit sections were scrapped so the opportunity existed to save something which neither scrapman or enthusiasts grasped. Certainly the Leeming Javelin deserves to be preserved -however it needs to be preserved better than sat in a field corroding away.
The real threat isn’t accidents or vandalism -its museums not putting them under cover.

I didn’t think Governments could gift aircraft supplied by the US Government, but either way the reason is as I stated, the loan conditions are too difficult to comply with.

It wasn’t just the cockpit sections that were available until scrapping, it was the entire aircraft. The scrapman, who had a lot of sympathy with museums, did grasp the point and delayed scrapping both as long as he could, waiting for museums that had declared an interest to do something about it, he was also willing to cut off the cockpits if someone actually took them away for only a little more than the scrap value. None did so the airframes had to go. I had many long conversations with him about this. I rescued some small parts but nothing substantial apart from a radome. Which, oddly enough, has been waiting for a museum to come and collect it.

Museums and groups not putting aircraft under cover is a real threat but to say that accidents and vandalism are not real threats is odd given that a number of important examples of preserved aircraft have been lost to just such occurrences. Not as many as have been lost to neglect I agree but they are still real losses. This is one reason why I, and many others, are against the idea that we should have single examples of each type in preservation and no others should be given any support.

There is an F-84 at Cosford which hasn’t seen the light of day since the late 1980’s ! Despite there being a couple of appropriate locations for it in the U .K – perplexingly it’s still moldering at Cosford! Having more aircraft doing the same doesn’t seem that appealing!

It’s not really that perplexing. The F-84 isn’t that well known or loved here and the regulations around US Government aircraft make them less attractive to an organisation than they might otherwise be. I know of a few that are on the “transfer list” due to this.

I presume you would rather the Javelin mouldered rather than be cut up and turned into high grade saucepans. It does need to be preserved, there are too few of them about, when numbers of any types are so low they’re very vulnerable to accidents and vandalism.

Even without the declarations needed by the RAF the Javelin is too much for some museums to handle. I’ve said before in another thread about how the Stafford and West Raynham Javelins were scrapped after a long delay with the scrappy waited for museums who had declared an interest to do something about taking them away, or even just taking large lumps of them away.

As my location suggests, I see these daily and yes they are very similar if not identical!

If they’re still there, Kenley and West Malling had the same pattern and Kidbrooke might have done but they might just have been similar looking Council Houses.

10 minute walk, try that if you are disabled.

Disabled or not it’s not a good walk but the 303 bus from Colindale station is reasonably frequent. Just don’t use it at school chucking out time.

Well done, much better than I managed

Out of interest, where were you when you took the photos? What size lens did you use?

They look good. I could never do a production line.

Was it the Contrail/Sanger vac form your father had? If it was, how did it go together, been thinking of buying one.