Was looking around the “Prince Of Van Nuys” a few years ago & each engine cowl had a birdsnest contructed completely from pieces of discarded safety wire…

During the resto of PA908 I found 17 bullet holes going in.. & only 11 coming out.. but no sign of the 6 bullets.

Maybe win the lottery & bring 10 B17’s over from the US 😉

& if *that* photog shows up again maybe give him a prime spot on top of the SuperHangar & then push the ****** off.

I’ll be calling em on Sunday, I have some bits laying about..)

A further thought … are we properly training today’s youngsters to bend the metal and craft the wood, or are these vital skills being lost? 🙁

Not only are the skills being lost, but the US has pretty much sold & then exported all the machines to China & India etc.

There isn’t a SINGLE item you can buy that didn’t have a machinist involved at some point in it’s history… & in the US wages for machinists are in the crapper. I can only image how bloody dire it must be back home in Blighty 🙁

If you read the interview he clearly states that there is an agreed way fwd with the A/C but there has been no application made. So its appears not the case that the CAA wont let it fly more the operator does not want it to at this time.

Or conversely, the CAA have told them the way forward & have made it so difficult to be impossible for them to even begin the application….. which the man from the CAA doesn’t actually confirm or deny..:cool:

This has been linked to before, but people may have missed it.

Gary Parson’s interview with the CAA.

http://www.key.aero/view_feature.asp?ID=35&thisSection=airshow

That CAA guy doesn’t *really* answer most of the questions… He’d make a great politician..

What I do think would be interesting if someone secure another Lightning airframe and cut her in half – length ways – showing her two engines, cockpit, avionics and weapons. Just a suggestion…

Similar thought: Restore it as a “sectioned” Lightning, that way you don’t have to source a whole bunch of panels & reskin parts of it 😉