Would the significance of the Lightning trainer be recognised within the RAFM displays and many of its visitors – I doubt it.
Personally prefer to see this particular airframe carrying on in memoriam of the role of the test-pilot, on Boscombes’ gate.

Sywell looks a pretty good little show, http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?t=118859&highlight=sywell and the previous days’ Fly-In, http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?t=118808

From what I have read in a Alfred price book the early spitfires did not have a crow bar either until 1940.

Yes, and that is what is missing in the photograph of the door Jay, it’s not a handle that you see on later aircraft but the crowbar.

I’m not that up to speed with the schedules, I think HFL has posted elsewhere that the hope is to have the Gannet nearing flying status by early next year.
The old engines are out and the new are standing by in the bag, props are off and I believe ready for refurbishment, all three u/c legs are new.
The standard of work on it is fantastic, and at the moment sits probably in it’s most stripped down sate, every thung is being thoroughly cleaned, inspected and replaced/repaired as nescessary. Even the instruments are being fully inpsected and tested and found to be working properly, indeed one of the guys methodically working on them found a fault in one of the original wiring diagrams!
So far the work has really centered on the fuselage and systems, the wings will follow.
There is a very good team (led by Clive) working on ‘500 now.
It’s going to be well worth waiting for!

What saddens me when I see news releases like this, is that there is a huge opportunity here to open up and make the most of an old RAF station with many superb period buildings and a rich history from RFC days, through the expansion era, and early cold-war fighter command, the best chance in this country possibly, and again it’s being spent on corporate ideas of new hotels and offices for conferences etc – how many conferences do we need!

£2.5m to check exhibits and ‘reinterpret’ the space sounds steep, it would be great to see all of this funding going into the old station and looking after the artefacts on display, it must be time for a new hangar for the long term display of the airliners outside?

£650k isn’t a lot for a new runway suface, would be interesting to see what they get for that.

The really famous, well restored, as seen on EBay & TV one, I didn’t realise that they had done more than one?

Edit, this one, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/8343665/Harrier-seeks-good-home.html

Out of interest, who’s going to buy it for £50-75k ?

I’m not trying to sound like that I’m writing this Harrier off (hopefully it will be restored!), but there are other more complete examples about.
Going off cockpit prices I would think that a sound hulk would go for more than £5k, some parts are incredibly hard to source (eg upper engine doors) and very expensive, it’s not for nothing that Jack Ruskin refers to parts as ‘unobtainium’!

Just to witness the event itself must have been something else, Tom Brooke-Smith haulling the Sealand and Sturgeon around the poles, Wade, Derry & Cunningham fighting to beat each other in the prototype Hawker and de Havilland jets, and the service entrants like the RAFAux Spitfires – wonderful stuff!
As you say David, it would be great to find some colour pictures of these air races.