Just had what looked like a Vampire at about 1000′ heading along the A12 E going harry flatters, from North Weald I take it? lovely sight

I saw it heading west about 1hr later!

Wonderful

🙂

A recent purchase has allowed me to add an original instrument panel to the windscreen section from TT.3 TS480. It was virtually complete when I got it but had two or three incorrect / broken instruments for a TT.3 (which it appears to have originally come from) and these have been replaced except for one Rad temp gauge that I’m still looking for, plus there are a couple of other little jobs on it that I need to attend to in time.

As you can probably imagine this has fulfilled my biggest ambition to date for this project. And as the Short Sturgeon celebrates the 70th anniversary of its first flight this year in a couple of months time, it also seems very fitting to achieve this now!

Rob[ATTACH=CONFIG]245492[/ATTACH]

Hi Rob,

This was an excellent find. How did you track it down, and where did you find it.

Could it have come from this airframe, or can you trace which one?

Just had this pointed out to me. This is not a Swiss Vampire grip. More likely to be German Gannet. The Vampire cockpit picture is an oddity, but it appears to be an American warbird conversion to toe brakes. No service Vampire, or venom ever had them.

Hi Bruce,

I concur on your Gannet suggestion. I had one of these grips, and it didn’t have the brake lever boss.

Indeed Swifter, very nice. If this works I will try and post a couple of pics of my recent ‘yoke’ haul but, for now these have recently joined my collection. The pair together are a pre-production Harrier, similar to the original often disliked Gr1/3 grip but, much chunkier and with the lovely Dunlop crinkly ‘vulcanite’ covering. The Swift is probably a Mk 4 or even earlier, hours of googling only seems to bring pictures of the FR5.

The Meteor is as far as I can make out (again from the burning midnight hours trawling the net), a TT20 however, the NF14 being restored by Blue 2 and his team also show a similar grip but, my sources only show the ‘normal’ two C/M button AC10522’s being fitted to all the night fighter variants. does anyone know any different?

Cheers,

Martyn

GYD

[ATTACH=CONFIG]245023[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]245024[/ATTACH]

Hi,
I used to own a TT.20 grip. It is very similar to the standard NF grip with the exception of a different button. The grip has a specific part number: AC14242.

The function of the buttons on top of the grip are (I recall, but stand corrected) M for microphone on the right side, and electric elevator trim on the Left.

the latest FP has an interesting article on Orfordness – well worth one of the NT guided tours you can do in the summer although the tours don’t give you access to the whole site. They do however get you access to a couple of the pagodas. Those pagodas are an interesting concept – if there was an uncontained explosion, the concrete struts holding the roof up would be blown out and the heavy roof would then fall down onto the reinforced walls like the lid of a box keeping everything within the pagoda (hopefully)

The article makes reference to the existence of a wing section – perhaps from a Stirling. Given the fact that the Stirling prototype was used for ballistic tests there after it broke its back on landing, i wonder whether this could be the source of the wing. If so, surely such a section needs recovering rather than being allowed to rot where it currently lies

I read this with interest yesterday. On behalf of the project, I’m going to investigate this to see what it is.

How many uk aircraft have been rebuilt from near extinction?

Off the top of my head:

Mosquito NF2
Halifax BIII “LV907”
Sunderland cockpit
3x Lancaster cockpits
Horsa
Bolton Paul Defiant

DH Hornet

The Canberra was unsold (high bid was £45k) and the Hunter sold for £13k

Given the heritage and aerial presence of the Canberra, would’nt it be a natural successor to the Vulcan under the custodianship of VTTS??