Absolutely agree, interestingly David was being interviewed on the One Show before the show went out and he seemed to have reservations about it to me.

Hi John, excellent update and some fantastic workmanship going on there:)
It must be difficult creating ‘new’ sections from small parts of original Stirling airframes?

Welcome to the forum ShakAirSig, and for recounting what must have been a terrible night for you.
I do think that these tragic post-war losses are sadly overlooked in the general publics’ eye.

Firstly I would like to say thanks to Genie for adding a rational point of view from t’other side.

I agree with that, and I can understand why he assumed a different alias to do it.

I’m in two minds about the whole Urbex thing, without them there are some fantastic airfield and aircraft related sites on the net that we wouldn’t normally see, and the artistic slant on the aircraft night photography (especially the coloured light thing) is a nice twist.

The whole trespass thing doesn’t bother me unduly, as I’ve never heard of these people vandalising anything, and their subsequent trip reports seem quite well thought out and written up – at the end of the day if the MoD or private security firms can’t secure their land properly that is their look out.

The bit that I’m uncomfortable with is when museums or private collections are trespassed upon, they don’t have the resources for good security and knowing that people are coming on to your land when normally you charge the public for it must be a bit galling.
the Midland Air Museum night shoot is very impressive, but would it not have been kinder to approach the museum about undertaking such an event, and them benefitting from charging for the priviledge?

Of course if it was my land or collections, I might feel differently about it.

Interesting – in the first link to the B&W photo, the outriggers are retracted and there is no damage on the spine near the wing root.

In the second link to the colour photo, the outriggers are down and there appears to be damage – or a panel removed – on the spine at the wing root.

Flap configuration is different as well…..

No conspiracy theories – just observing.

It looks to me like the outriggers have been lowered and locked down (note red RBF flags) and the flaps raised into neutral position so as to make the airframe fit for removal and lowering to the ground. Maybe the spine panel was removed to allow the latter to be undertaken?

Edit, sorry Dave, coincidental posting!

Beware opening the first link in post #9, it caused my computor to topple!

Can’t help with any Martinet serial though (if, of course, that is what it is). Sure it’s not a Firefly FR.1 (examples of which were definitely dumped there too)?

Surprising how similar the two tail profiles are, what errs it on the side for Martinet for me is the tail plane positioning seems to far aft for the Firefly, (Martinet elevators come aft of the rudder hinge line) but maybe that is a trick of the angle it was taken at?