Don’t forget that the work of these dead airframes on ranges was fairly important to the MoD, either for day to day weapons training for pilots or as experimental and proofing work of new weapons effectiveness on current airframe structures, and even new structures worthiness against current weaponary – all very important when you are developing new combat aircraft and arms of the likes of say the Lightning and its weapons system.
There seems to a common misconception that range and fire training use airframes were simply wasted, but they served a valuable role.
All ranges are by their very nature remote and roading in the airframes was large task that had to undertaken.

Would also love to see anymore Pendine shots that you may have OldMan.

From what I remember some clown wanted to do air to air with a Nimrod so we were airborne for at least another hour!

The picture of this appeared on the front cover of ‘Westwings’ the RAF St Mawgan station mag. Didn’t the Nimrod shepard the Cat from somewhere?

Fantastic television, only caught it last minute myself.
Should be considered ‘benchmark’ for any dramatised and documentry based aviation history programme.
Fascinating just how quickly the Germans would set up sporadic V1 & 2 sites in the remotest of locations, transport the missiles there, launch them and move on again, the story of the human cost of these weapons was incredible.
Also have to say that the Spitfire PR looked stunning and great to se the American pilot in colour archive footage with USAF Spitfires.

BBC at its best, this is what I pay my licence fee for!:)

To whet your appetite here’s one of a series of air-to-airs I took of the Meteor en route to Cambridge when Stan H was at the controls.

Fantastic pictures you lucky so and so!
The Meteor night fighters are my favourite versions (especially the NF.14), to me it is when the Meteor got to ‘look right’.

As a more general question, in other countries back seat rides in old aircraft can be purchased, can this happen in this country or are there regulations against this?
You would think that offering back seat (or side by side) flights would be a good way of raising revenue for operators.

Excellent update and pics again Rich.
Personally speaking (from my comfy computor room!) I reckon that reinstating the bombdoors wouldn’t be that big a problem to overcome, I can see a possible route of just reverse engineering what HSA/RAF did when they created the AEW. Just as an idea (I’m sure you guys have your own) I would consider joining the front and rear sections together by joining the relevant internal door rib structures together and reskinning over the cut area of the two panels, then fabricate replacement panels for those radar support cut outs up front.
The hydraulics would surely still work fine where they are currently situated in theory, ie the hinge geometries etc wouldn’t have changed, so they should operate your new ‘extended’ doors fine? You can alway test that idea quite simply before fabricating the doors together.
In that last shot the doors even appear to be full length originals!

Couldn’t get the OP’ s link to load, but you can also check out http://miragebym.blogspot.com/2009/02/airplane-graveyard-of-st-augustine-01.html

Excellent link and fantastic images, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Tracker, Tracer, & Trader family. It would be great to see at least a cockpit section of one in the UK.
I thought that this comment on the blog was interesting,
“Anonymous said…
I’m trying to trace number 153. When my dad was in teh Dutch navy, he stole it and flew it to Libya from Malta. He was court marshalled for it and spent a year in the slammer. It’s always been a good story since, but now I’m trying to find out what happened to out. From records, it went back to the US in 1970. If anyone has info: maurits at uwclub.net thanks “!:eek:

The hat or the princess?

My thoughts exactly, definitely a chip off the old block that one, the chav princess lives on!

The links don’t work for me either, they ask me to log in to FB and when I do I end up at my own page!