What a sad story…. I remember exploring the site in wonderment back in 1988, it was a time capsule.

At least the hangars are listed, but that will not guarantee their long term survival. They need purpose and funding. Just a couple of miles away across the Mersey on the Liverpool waterfront is the largest group of Grade 1 listed buildings in Britain – The Albert Dock. In the 70’s it was in a poor state, having been bombed in WWII and fallen out of use as dock. Demolition was considered, but with the new perception of heritage value in the 80’s its importance was recognised and it was turned in to a multi-use development, leisure, retail, accommodation and a major art gallery. That was achieved because there was a clear, workable, profitable use strategy and financial backing in place from both local business, national bodies and local and central government – it worked. Thats how its done – either that or you need a single minded wealthy individual who can fund it him/herself but even then a long term strategy is needed to ensure future survival.

Maybe regulations have changed,practices tightened up since they went but even so i know i loved seeing them .

Not really – they were just very, very good at what they did – in fact, the best. I consider it a great privelage to have got to work with Ray and the Breitling team on a couple of occasions, the most recent being their final performances at Wanaka in 2004. Ray, Mark and the team all hugely missed.

A quick look through the appropriate ebay category suggests that Private sellers can charge reasonable postage with no problems.

I suspect business sellers have to offer free P+P, so should factor it in to the asking price.

Bruce

I bid on a book on Ebay yesterday (it would normally sell for £10 to £12 in that condition – ie: ‘like new’). At the top of the desription on the official ‘postage costs’ section it said UK postage was £3.25. Later on I noticed the seller had a line at the bottom of his desrciption which said:

Airmail £16.00
UK £10.00

When I queried this he said I could have it for £6.00 postage! My max bid was then limited to £4.00 as I wanted my overall costs to be no more than £10 – it would have been £7.00 with the lower postage costs. Somebody else then won the auction at £4.20 – for a book which should really sell for three times that amount, hmmm!

The most common widths available are:

25mm
50mm
75mm
100mm

Is that ‘tape’ on a roll? Post #7 refers to wider vinyl roll sizes 605mm plus so I guess you can get it any size you want within reason. Wider rolls will be hard to handle without experience I would say, particularly if applying to compound curves.

Do you know why it was removed?

Baz

Baz, the wire antenna was factory fitted to work with a ‘Detrola’ receiver. This unit was mounted on the cockpit floor and was designed to pick up transmissions from US control towers (obviously only when in the US!). Once shipped to a foreign theatre the unit was pretty much useless and usually removed along with the wire antenna. The active radio antenna was the one inside the mast.

Antiqueaviation…

This didn’t come from an Irish barn, did it? 🙂

Ha ha! An Irish Seafire via an installment plan :p Could go on for years….

Still registered to Demon Displays so I guess it didnt sell;)

Its not uncommon these days to sell the ‘ownership company’ along with the aeroplane (eg; Spitfire Ltd) in which case it does not show as a change in ownership on the G-INFO database.

Graham – it does not look to be a part of the bomb carrier for the Mk IIB Hurricane (‘Hurri-bomber – max 500LB load), pretty sure on that.