Hi Andrew,
As far as I know,they were talking about a first flight in late 2003,or possibly early 2004 depending on how things go, so I’d very much doubt that she’d be on display at Legends this year.

Some of Janie herself wouldn’t go amiss Yak. 🙂

Here’s a piccy of the Lyneham gate guard taken in October ’98. For anyone interested in the comet,this site is worth a look…

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/8803/fcometpi.htm

With regard to the Hatfield site,the land is owned by the University of Hertfordshire.It was apparently agreed quite a while before the airfield actually closed down that BAe would donate the site to the University.The current redevelopments do include some domestic housing,but much of it will be new buildings for the Uni and I’m lead to believe that only a small part of that will be a campus site,so there wouldn’t be too many folks in general area on a daily basis.
My brother was head of the Student’s Union at UHU last year,and he got to see the plans for himself,which is where my info comes from.The hangar is listed and will not be demolished,although I don’t know what they plan to do with it.My idea would be to use the place as a dual museum and engineering dept.,the students working on the airframes as part of thier course.Just an idea…
As for the Trident which used to be there,she was chopped up last August.I managed to get a look round her on my visit in July and came away with one or two instruments from the engineers panel which now make excellent paperwieghts.

I can’t believe another major UK museum is considering chopping up an early mark Comet.This situation with outdoor airframes is getting ridiculous,there has to be some sort of push to get hangars built on existing museum sites,or to establish a museum or collection in existing vacant hangars,even if it can’t be opened to the public for the time being.
I know there’s probably very,very little chance of it happenning,but Hatfield would make an aproriate home for the Comet,and various other airframes.I can think of atleast a dozen ‘at risk’ airframes which would have an appropriate home at Hatfield.The surviving hangar on the site is absolutely HUGE, it seems absolutely ridiculous that a vast indoor space like that is vacant whilst aircraft rot outdoors.I visited the derelict Hatfield site on my way back from Legends last year,and it struck me that the guys at the IWM would kill for hangar space like that.

As I understand it,most museums and preservation groups prefer to avoid spraypainting if possible as there are quite a number of health and safety issues to consider.The majority paint thier aircraft with rollers and some brushwork,and the results are usually pretty good,the Shack at Coventry being a prime example. Despite it’s vast size,the entire aircraft was painted with rollers,no mean feat when you consider that the workforce is fairly small and that the whole job was done outdoors.I would imagine this is what Cosford would do with thier exhibits,and I’m pretty certain it’s what they did with the Neptune.

From what I’ve read,there is a big problem with the Russian mafia and other corrupt groups becoming involved in these recovery operations.In one case a few years ago,one ‘mafia’ group sold one Hurricane wreck to a number of different western collectors. They then cut the aircraft up into sections,one buyer getting the wings,one the tail etc etc,and some got nothing at all.As far as I know,there have been very few prosecutions brought against anyone for this type of crime,and I’m lead to belive that it’s still pretty rife.All in all,these discoveries are best kept secret to try and prevent criminal involvement,but it may be that thoughts of recovery attempts have been thwarted by criminal activity.