I have not been to the FAA Museum for many years so don’t take this as gospel but several of the larger museums contract out their catering and the percentage take going to the museum can be very small: a much larger percentage goes in corporate profits. Much prefer the more informal “in house” arrangements often staffed by volunteers.

Planemike

Fear not, the catering at the FAAM is run by the museum’s trading arm and not hived off to any outside company.

The reason the Flycatcher was offered to the museum was the fact that John Fairey had found a cracked spar and decided that he did not want to repair it but preserve the airframe and sell the engine, this he did. The Flycatcher was on show in the museum for several years, as were the WWI replicas, but with over 100 airframes in the collection and space for 50 on show as mentioned above the policy is to rotate the collection at least once a year so that as far as possible there is something new each year for the visitor to see.

Blue Air have recently aquirred 2 ex RNZAF airframes and another Strikemaster from the UK to add to thier fleet

As far as I can make out, XE340 has returned to Yeovilton from the museum at Montrose and is stored outdoors with canopy intact? It appears to be a parts mule for the display aircraft, so they might be happy to loan the canopy?

XE340 was returned to FAAM from Montrose and the RNHF did express an interest in looking at it as a spares source but this came to nothing as the flyer was grounded and placed in long term storage at Shawbury, so it might be worth contacting the Curator of Aircraft at FAAM to see if a loan could be arranged.

British aircraft preservation council.

Originally was but changed to British Aviation Preservation Council several years ago to reflect the wider subject matter such as support equipment and airfields etc

Peter can you confirm that the Wyvern is now back in Cobham hall, as I was planning on visiting the museum again if it was back on display properly?

Rob

The Wyvern is back on show in Hall 4, however later in the year it may be replaced with something else
BobT

All I know is that it brought a real thrill to what would otherwise have been a fairly dull RIAT. True, the flying display was a decent mix of international military hardware but it was hardly exciting. As ever, the majority of the interesting aircraft were sat motionless in the static park surrounded by assorted junk. I don’t think any of the seasoned observers were expecting anything remarkable from the Vulcan display, but it was a welcome surprise right from the start. A very neat right-hand turn on take-off which was reminiscent of Joe L’Estrange’s performances back in the 1980s. Then we were all delighted to see that the various passes were actually close to the display line instead of being a long way away (as has often been the case with XH558’s display in civilian hands). Then to finish the display a stunning climb into the vertical and a neat roll off the top fully inverted. It was like a Farnborough show from the 1950s, as was the landing with the tail ‘chute being popped before touch-down. Thrilling stuff when one considers how tame the Vulcan performances have been. I guess there’s no reason to pamper XH558 now that the flying will soon be over, so congratulations to Kevin for what was a real tear jerker for more than a few people. It’s not often that one hears a whole air show audience applaud a display act. Not often that I’m impressed by any aviation events these days but yesterday’s performance certainly did it for me! 🙂

When it departed Yeovilton on Thursday for Fairford the aircraft did exactly that manoeuvre on take off, must have been practicing, very impressive indeed.