All the plating joints were sealed with lots of smelly brown PRC…..

d) The acting will be hollow because they didn’t actually live through the War, or serve in the Forces.

Meryl Streep seems to have pulled off a remarkable portrayal of Margaret Thatcher, without being British or having ever been a politician! 🙂

Top tank was not crash proofed (no room!), so is natural metal finish, or in this case painted silver.

Supermarine drawings call for the finish to the top tank to be Aluminium Pigmented Paint’, the original one I have access to (CBAF manufactured 1944) is indeed painted thus although I would not be surprised to find some escaped the painting process.

and 41H/667665′ isn’t a Hunter construction number as far as I can tell

I know nothing about Hunters but in wartime that string would have meant the factory location (HABL), the Air Ministry code for Hawkers being 41H and the final set of numbers represents the serial number of the component its stenciled to (rather than the entire aircraft).

WATER SLIDE TRANSFERS!! lol, i take back my Airfix jibe. i wonder how long they did that for??.

Much more common that you might think. Many of the cockpit markings on the P-51 are water-slide decals, as are some of the external ones (the remainder being mainly rubber stamp applied with only a few conventional stencils). The majority of the external factory applied instructional markings on the P-40 were water slide decals.

I’ve heard that North American painted the wings so as to smooth the surface finish of the wing as much as possible

They actually used filler on the leading edges and around the first 25% of the wing cord, before painting in a dull silver finish.

Its intended to be annual – although I hear the 2012 event will not be the ‘full blown’ version. Good news I say with so many events disappearing from the calender!

Just wondered if anyone else has a first sighting; and if it made them as addicted to the aircraft as mine made me.

Welcome to the forum Nick. Mine was also with TD248 – but a few years later, in about 1975, on the gate at RAF Sealand!