Thank you for the advice and the invitations, Gents, we shall try to inflict ourselves on you!
M’sieur JDK, my complexion matched the runway when I saw your pics from Hairyplane’s Maggie. You lucky lucky lucky……………………………………
Adrian
Remember that the railway line you pass from Cardington to OW was used in Those Maginifcent Men in their Flying Machines….
TT
Is that the one Terry-Thomas rode the train on? Great fun, shame about the coal fired power station in the background!
I’ll see what I can do about the ‘Ornet Moff.
JDK – ta for the tips, hadn’t thought about the R101 grave actually being at Cardington. Might have to take a peek…
ADrian
According to my folks, a Hercules came in over Gt Sampford and crossed BENEATH something coming in to Stansted. I don’t know how high the normal route in to Stansted is there (and it’s about half that when Federal Express come in – they must be heavier!), or what the vertical seperation was but I can see why Fat Alberts doing that are scaring people. Scared 7 bells out of Mum – would like to have seen it myself!
Adrian
That’s cheating! You’re only allowed to hit the deck if you go back up again! :diablo:
(which obviously boogers anyone who was daft enough to carry on flying afterwards – me, I’m us happy that anyone has flown me has only ever interfaced with the ground at the start and finish of the flight and not in the middle! G-BGRH – I know you are still out there! Anyone on the forum involved with you?)
Adrian
There is also a replica living at Saffron Walden (so not that far from DX) built for the local dramatic society’s production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Given that the builder has one of those La France fire engine chassis modified into a gargantuan pre-WW1 sports car-alike, it may well have some interesting bits under the bonnet. It certainly looks the part, though I never checked for wings… It’s builder was a founder member of the charmingly acronymed Shire Hill International Transport Society… :diablo:
Is Derek Piggott still with us? I was taught History at school by his son, and my parents house is still graced by a cactus said son gave me, named George Truscott after the gardener at Lasham – or so I was told…
Adrian
Pete,
Two (lousy) photos – all I have. I wondered at the time whether they were Hurricane debris – I’ve kicked myself on a regular basis ever since even though Mum would probably have thrown it out…
By the way, that isn’t a wheel hub or anything, it’s the afroementioned tractor belt pulley.
Adrian
Oh my…. 😮 😮
Bit of a clunker, isn’t it?
Right, off to bed… finished the cricket season with a heroic 11no to win the match with one ball to spare and I am absolutely cormoranted!
Adrian
Thought this was typical – when they make howlers on things you know about, it does make you wonder how accurate things they report on that you know nothing about are…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4258552.stm
Go to piccie number 4 and wince…
Adrian
(though at least they covered it – thanks to Charles and Camilla, I wonder?)
If anyone is standing underneath when you fly in you could just call it…
DUCK!
Grins, ducks and runs! :diablo:
Adrian
There was an odd bit that was obviously one rib from the rear of a flying surface sticking out of a concrete block, and some odd tangled bits that seemed to be part of a control linkage. As you went past the pond going to the farmyard entrance with the barns on the left, they were in some other junk (including a standard Fordson belt pulley wheel) on the edge of the ditch, and the rib was in the end of the ditch I think.
I MAY have a photo – I’ll try to unearth it in the next day or two…
Adrian
(at least one Gray farmed Parsonage, and as the rest were carpenters in the village for centuries there is a good chance that they put up some of those outbuildings. Hence my nosiness!)
Not sure whether any of the stencils can be seen any more for flowerpots, but if they can I might take you up!
Did you ever visit Parsonage Barns while they were being worked on? I walked up there once while they were skeletal and on the side of the verge were a couple of random bits of what were obviously aircraft debris. Stupidly I never picked them up because I had nowhere to put them, and my folks have got quite enough of my junk already…
Adrian
Well spotted, Pete! How do you do it?
Sounds like your VE Day party was about the time that we had a lot of Lynx near Cornish Hall End (Rivetts, the next house up on the same side as Shore Hall – the one with the trees lining the drive). Admittedly I had the attic bedroom for reasons of teenage siblings but all the same it’s quite a thrill to see a Lynx outside close enough to see the pilot silhouetted in the green glow from the instruments BELOW you!
Adrian
One of my parent’s myriad sheds still has a few boards in the back of it with Republic Aircraft Corporation stencils on from Wethersfield – they used to have a whole shed, but time and tide overtook it! Considering apparently that all that was left was the junk packing cases when they got there, the fact that the shed lasted over forty years says a lot for “junk”.
I could see the masts (radio ariels?) with red lights on from my bedroom window as an anklebiter. Imagine my surprise then, years later, when I got in touch with the son of a man who’d taken photos of my great grandparents in 1914, and found that he’d moved from Scotland to Essex and helped build Wethersfield!
ADrian
No doubt where I saw her in 1982 – I’d never even heard of a Lincoln then (well I was only ten!).
Mark, best of luck with her – I’d moan about our heritage going overseas but frankly. given how she’s been treated in the UK, she’s better off down under. GOOD LUCK!
Adrian
I seem to recall that Stephen Grey is one of the faces on a jacket company ad that regularly runs in a magazine not a million miles from here… If so, he obviously doesn’t likie to poke his head over the parapet too much as he’s been standing in the same place in the same jacket in front of the same Spitfire for what feels like about fifteen years…
Adrian