RE: Eggbeater finale

Hey I saw those as I was driving round the M25 on Wednesday…wondered what was going on…now I know!

RE: CAF P47 incident

Sad to hear about this…but glad it was not fatal…

Naaaah…not me…

…personally I like keeping my feet dry…preferably in a Spitfire 😉

RE: Hendon chaos

At Duxford, we have two main different types of caption boards, as I am sure some of you are aware…there are the old style big heavy white boards with black and white pictures and limited information about each individual aircraft and the aircraft type…and then there are the colour boards as appear in the AAM and Battle of Britain Exhibition in Hanger 4…

Out of interest, what would you all like to see on a caption board? To me, an ideal caption board would have:

1) A colour picture of that particular aircraft
2) A period black/white or color picture of that aircraft type
3) A short history of the type
4) A short history of that individual aircraft e.g squadron, bases, pilots, crew etc
5) Current owner and how it came to be in their hands
6) Technical information e.g engine, wingspan, etc etc
7) Any interesting facts about that particular aircraft
8) Translations of text into at least French and German

Anything else anyone can think of?

RE: Hawkinge

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 12-03-02 AT 12:42 PM (GMT)]A site such as Hawkinge will always provoke strong emotions…

I first visited Hawkinge in 1996 and one of my abiding memories of that visit is of looking through the perimeter fence at where the airfield once was and trying to picture myself back in 1940…watching Hurricanes scramble to meet the enemy…a most thought provoking moment…

This is what saddens me about recent developments at Hawkinge, for that view will be lost…I understand that it is not financially viable to preserve the whole of Hawkinge airfield, but if they could have just kept that view in front of the fence I would have been happy…

Dezz…I think most of us if not all of us here would agree that Hawkinge is important…to me, Hawkinge is a reminder of the men who flew from there in the darkest days of the war but I understand that you don’t HAVE to preserve every bit of ground for it to be a memorial…at least at Hawkinge we have a wonderful museum to visit (personally it and Manston are my very favourites), with many important artefacts and exhibits on show in some of the original buildings…

Kent has a rapidly expanding population…and housing must be built to deal with this…sadly this means that land once occupied by airfields will sometimes be lost to these building programmes…but all is not lost…there is Hawkinge…the Spitfire and Hurricane Memorial at Manston…the Battle of Britain Memorial at Capel Le Ferne…the Medway Preservation Group at Rochester…and at West Malling there is a new memorial to the men who flew from there…I am sure someone here will be able to add to the list…

Just my two cents 🙂

Ashley, Spitfire Polisher and SR-71 Fluffer

RE: Planning Disaster – Act Now!!

“Demolish the buildings on the Officers Mess site”…HA! They would have to get past me first 😉

And don’t be disheartened Bob…there are some of us who have taken note already even if we haven’t replied to this post 🙂

RE: Is the F86 to fly this year?

Philo…just joined up there as well…I saw something just now about The Fighter Collection’s F-86, G-BZNL, has been sold to the USA, not G-SABR…

Interesting information I thought as I didn’t know that they HAD an F-86…

RE: Lysander spats

Well Snoopy…the only thing I can think of, is that the IWM aircraft has been restored to represent Hugh Verity’s Lysander (as already mentioned!), and I presume that attempts have been made to make it as true to Hugh’s aircraft as possible…I believe that the aircraft is a Canadian built example restored by the Aircraft Restoration Company…can anyone else confirm/tell me otherwise please?