Go for it Mogster, Susannah is waiting for you. – Digitally enhance frilly knickers. You’ll be jelly![/QUOTE]

Are you quite sure about that?

Adrian

(Oh fiddlesticks, I’ve lowered the tone AGAIN!)

I can’t read and I can’t write but I can drive a tractor…

Hi Peter,

I am not an expert on these things, I just like them, but I’ll have a go…

I THINK the tractor has been “civilianised” with parts from a later Fordson E27N Major. Certainly the toolbox is, I think the aircleaner pipe may be, and the filler tops on the tank are. I doubt that the tops are interchangeable as the Model N ones have always looked smaller to me. But the later tank should be dark blue – if it’s any other colour it could perhaps have come from an industrial version?

Vokes are still about – always worth a go, try http://www.vokes.com and see if they can help you. Even if they can’t help with supply, you might be lucky and find someone who knows somone who knows someone…

As for the footrest, I fear it’s a case of scouring the classifieds in the tractor press (I can supply names, though I suspect that George already knows about them). You can get a blanking plate WITHOUT a rest but again it’d have to be looked for, and I’m not sure how safe it would be for the poor driver…

Wish him Good Luck!

Adrian

Robbo,

Unless you managed to heavily underexpose your negatives, that sounds like their developer solution was getting old.

You could try Efke film – it is a 1950’s style single emulsion apprently but to my inexpert eye does give very good tonal values – certainly on the 25 and 50 speed, I tend to use Ilford for 100 as it’s easy to find (at the mo…)

Now where were we before I derailed the thread?

Adrian

Try http://www.abebooks.com. Always worth a go for anything out of print!

Adrian

Well, if it’s HALF as good as Spitfire Ace then it’ll be pretty damn good. Here’s hoping the same people are in charge of quality control!

Adrian

I’ll name that coastline in one!

Something like this, perhaps – 25 Sqn over the north Kent coast, Sqn Ldr H H Down leading his fighters in echelon in 1937.
A Charles Sims photo from page 70 of his book “Camera in the Sky”- MOTF’s grandfather perhaps?

If you ever spot a copy of this book, it’s a fascinating evocation of the snapper’s job before they stopped doing silly things like flying Gloster Gnatsnappers at your head… (you think that photo looks scary? Just think how scary it could be if actually CS had a waist-level viewfinder in his camera!)

Anyway, back to my point… Swalecliffe (under starboard wing) and Tankerton are just visible underneath the lead Fury, with Herne Bay in the background. I had student digs in Hernia Bay, and amongst others met an old boy who had fished “Elmer” Gaunce out of the sea during the BoB – then had to go to see him in hospital the next day and return the shirt collar they’d removed to give him the kiss of life! He also remembers seeing Esmonde’s ten Swordfish staging into Manston prior to their doomed attack on the Scharnhorst and Gniesenau. Oh, and a Home Guard anti-aircraft rocket launcher filling the cockpit of a mis-identified Typhoon with a very nasty smell!

I’ll bog off and let the thread continue in the right direction now – just to say that I love the pics – if only there’d been any flyboys in my family who had any photos!

Adrian

Ooops – forgot the link!

Piccy at http://www.newtecumseth.library.on.ca/banting/database/000107a.html

I THINK that’s the tail, but there’s so little left it’s a job to tell!

Adrian

There were allegedly two Merlins under sheets in a garden in Herne Bay in the late 1980s – supposed to be going into a boat…

And I recall seeing a picture of US chat show host Jay Leno in a Merlin-engined Rolls Royce with quite the ugliest boat-body I’ve ever seen – mid ’90s?

Adrian