I wonder if JDK will be there……….? 😉

Nah, three’s a crowd.

Did the USN ever experiment with USAAF fighters (P38, P40, P47, P51 etc) to operate from the carriers?

No – they were not made by Grumman!

Everything comes to he (or she) who waits!

What? No fun with no rear controls though, surely?

Dan, nice one but I think the old C of G issue would mean that like the T.9 you need to start by moving the front cockpit forward by 13.5 inches. It would be interesting to see how this looks. BTW – leave the rear door etc where it is – this will leave more space for the rear persons knees, rudder bar etc.

Yes volunteering is a varied thing and you have to accept anything you are asked to do or just forget it. To give you an example, a week or so ago I spent the morning sweeping out the hangar floor, Sunday afternoon was spent paint stripping (not the hangar floor but an aircraft component) and tomorrow I will be doing some rivetting. I made quite a lot of tea too.

Fair comments here – but am alone in getting an uneasy feeling that the concensus is “unless you work on the aircraft you cannot criticise the work”? This in turn says “anything done to ‘restore’ the aircraft, regardless of quality, is good because its done by hard working volunteers”.