I’m afraid that your recollection’s going on this one Chox.
I’m almost certain that the last contact ‘Jacko’ had with operating controls on TG517 was on 22 June 1977, when he switched them off after the delivery flight. The engines weren’t run again until Joe Petroni and his follow volunteers came along several years later (see the links in post #20 ). This was well after the museum site and aircraft had moved across to the other side of the showground.
The local ATC Squadron ‘adopted’ TG517, with the initial aim of cleaning it down etc from recollection their CO worked for one of the local Council’s and had access to a cherry picker. 😮 Sadly they also undertook some unsupervised and unplanned work, which contributed to the inboard engine issue; TG517 was then taken back into museum ‘care’.
In the late 1980s and 1990s a major internal refurbishment programme was undertaken by a museum member and his wife, which was featured in FlyPast.
‘Jacko’ did return and record some video interviews in TG517 during the mid 2000s, which were included in the Virtual Museum CD ROM.
As mentioned earlier on the thread the third Hangar is sadly away off. This is due to the need to become more self-sufficient on the Southfield Site and hence the planning for the construction of a new Visitor Centre.
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