Following on from Bruce’s comments, I too joined said same Museum just a year after him as a volunteer after a chance visit one Sunday with my Dad. Unfortunately family events intervened and I had to move further south just over a year later (albeit I still managed to hitch a lift back every now and then to keep working on the aircraft, and indeed often took bits back with me to do at home!).
However, that sowed the seed that led me, on leaving school, to successfully apply for a 4-year fully indentured aeronautical apprenticeship with the MoD – a much coveted thing in those days when, out of some 740 applicants only 25 were taken on. One entire year of hand skills training (mainly filing metal blocks to rediculous tolerances!), one year sheet metal and systems training and then two years on the shop floor eventually ended up with me becoming Bronze medalist at the MoD Apprentice of the Year competition out of 1,700 apprentices nationwide (….cough…blow own trumpet 😀 ). All that coupled with ONC and HNC day-release courses at the nearby college. And best of all, it paid! Not hugely, but it was better than nothing.
I also got involved with some more aircraft restoration at the same time – two aircraft that, funnily enough, eventually found their way to Cobham Hall, Yeovilton just a few hundred yards from where I now work. On the back of my apprenticeship I got a weekend job with a local company maintaining and restoring light and vintage aircraft which gave me the opportunity to try my hand at woodworking and fabric covering – I’ll always have the greatest admiration for those who can do that!! Though I certainly didn’t do it for the money (more for the experience) the intermittent nature of the payments that I was promised, increasingly bizarre behaviour of the owner finally put an end to that one. No experience is worth being made a mug of.
All that, and more, from a chance visit to a Museum!
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