Beautiful restoration. I wouldn’t fancy trying to get out of it in a hurry though….
Even getting in, in a Sidcot suit, must have been a squeeze.

Echo the above…

“Thank you for the days, those endless days, those sacred days you gave me”

http://ghostgrey.gaetanmarie.com/articles/2010/Modification%20XXX/Modification%20XXX%20-%20Beer-carrying%20Spitfires.htm

Even the residual 2 Stoffs in the tanks were liable to explode with a bumpy landing.
Apparently it was a very fine pure glider… someone in Germany has built, and flies a replica 163.
Details here…..
http://robdebie.home.xs4all.nl/me163/kurz.htm

Very nostalgic pictures of QJ-J, thanks for posting them. That was also my first real live Spitfire, I vividly recall it arriving at a Culdrose Air Day in the late 1950’s, flown by Jeffrey Quill and owned by Vickers.
And the lad in short trousers and school cap in front of the Rotodyne….classic!

The Wigram Oxford as seen in Nov 2006, nice to see it’s coming along. Thank goodness the museum did not suffer significant earthquake damage. It is a very fine museum, a must see in the South Island.

Went from the Embankment to Greenwich on the Thames Clipper last week and was overflown by a Lynx, Chinook and two Apaches. Bad guys beware.

That’s 20,351 Happy Returns, then.