There we go, there we go, and then we're going to pan.
We're back at the Secret Barn, Yeah, in somewhere in East
Anglia, and we've got some bits of aeroplane.
Some bits of aeroplane are moved.
Tell us what's happened since the last time we spoke about two
months ago. Well, the last time we met Steve
was in a was a nightclub, I think, wasn't it?
No, it was here. It was really cold, wasn't it?
It was cold, it was wet. And the the task then was to
move the wings. I think that was about to be
moved. So the aeroplane is in about 5
or 6 sections and the wings weigh about 10 tonne, half each.
So they had to go separately. The wings have gone and now the
sort of the, the jewel in the crown that's left is the
fuselage and the nose and a few other bits which hopefully
around here somewhere. But this is the first time the
fuselage has been outside since probably 1997 or something.
So 30 years. And it's given us a chance to
have a look at what's what's in store for us really, and to make
sure what's missing, what's not missing, what needs polishing,
what needs painting, trying to preserve all the sort of the
patina of that. Whether we keep it covered up
and just leave it as it is or we, we sort of, you know, touch
it in a bit and make it a bit more white.
Personally, I think we just try and keep it as it is.
You can see that the aeroplane was covered in a, in a lacquer,
so it was polished and then lacquered.
And that's obviously got old and various panels have got more
lacquer than others pits on it. And there I, I had a little rub
there and polished this particular panel so you can see
what can be done. And unlike the nose, this is
going to be a, a much easier job, I think, because it's just
a machine that goes down rather than sort of hand finishing as
it were. But it gives you a good, a good
insight to how lightning was built.
So the rear fuselage, this section here, this is where the
wings will slide into. And if you imagine the wings
like a boomerang. So the wings are split
individually with an I bar to attach the two together.
Once they're attached, you then slide this boomerang into here,
which is then attached to this bolt, which I didn't realise was
here actually. So that's a major find today,
knowing this bolt here, and then that's going to go on there and
that goes in here. And then if we look inside the
fuselage for the very, very geeky people, you can see how
it's manufactured. So the wings will go in here,
then sit onto here, and then all along here.
And I'm there'll be an engineer somewhere who'll be writing to
me and complaining. But I'm pretty sure that these
will be the control rods. So the rods will go from there
into the cockpit, which we'll look at in a second down to the
back end where the stabs are. And that's what makes the
aeroplane go up and down. So that will do that.
And this gives a really good impression of that.
The Lightning was just a tube. So it's a tube with two engines
in it and a pilot at the front of it.
So in the in the aircraft, if you've read on course line
collective.com, our latest newsletter about fuel, you'll
realise that there's no fuel in the fuselage, that all the fuel
goes in the wings. So here is just a receptacle for
the 2 engines and you've got to get the fuel from the wings into
the engines and across them here.
So you've got to have the 2 engines in here with the 2 jet
pipes and then a mechanism to get the fuel into the engines.
And that's where some of the problems start with the
lightning because the fuel will leak and pull in places and then
catch fire. So further down here, I haven't
looked here yet, but there'll be various bits and pieces which
may or may not be off this lightning and this, this will be
the number 2 engine, the top engine which would sit in this
area here and then the jet pipe would go through there.
The number one engine would sit in here and have a longer jet
pipe because it's sitting further forward.
So that that's why when you look at the lightning at the back end
of it and you see all the photographs, there's always a
big long plume out at the top and a smaller plume out at the
bottom because the engines are staggered and the jet pipes are
slightly longer on the 2. And you can see that this
aeroplane was built in 1957 and it's literally a Meccano set.
So everything here is just bolted in with like a piece of
Meccano that engineers made in, you know, 50-60 years ago.
And every panel has the number of the aeroplane painted on it
and which panel it is, so you know which it is.
So this one here is going to be 41 P and 48 P.
And then we look around the side here and we know that 41 P and
my dyslexia has got the better of me and 48 P has become 43 P.
So that's that panel there. And these are all held in with
little clips at the back. And then the ground crew could
take those off. And This is why I'll try and try
and show you somehow where where most of the most of the ground
crew could have been superb gynaecologists.
Because you had to actually take the panel off, put your hand in
and then start working inside the aircraft.
You can take that bit out if you want, but you literally had to
put your hand in. Fortunately, we've got some baby
wipes in the car because I'm going to be filthy now.
And then they would have to get a spanner, which they'd probably
tied to their arm. And then they would be getting a
fuel pipe. And they'd try to feel where the
fuel pipe was, get the end of the nut and then sort of tighten
it up with a spanner and then take their arm out.
And it'd be all dusty. So that that's why the Lightning
has got this sort of mystique and mystery about it, because it
was such a complicated aeroplane to fly and also to engineer.
Because when you look down the side, the guy would look, so
pump filler capacity, 500 CCS, don't know why CCS.
So I'm assuming behind here would be a hydraulic pump.
He'd come along, he'd undo all those screws, take it off, and
then you'd have to connect something in here and then try
and fill up a hydraulic pump from the outside in.
So it was, it was, you know, in AF15 or something.
Now you'd have a panel here that you just unlatch, you'd lift the
panel up, there'd be a connector, connect it and off
you go. So it's a very, very different
era and other things which you can see here that the engine,
the starter for the engine is on the front of the engine, but
when it starts, all the hot gases come outside the fuselage.
So again, it's a, you know, fairly dangerous type thing.
Things like this is a refuelling panel and all handmade.
Again, all sort of hand finished, but on that one of the
beautiful things about this aircraft is because it has so
much patina and so much sort of unfettled sort of memorabilian
history on it. So on here you can see in sort
of handwritten on the fuel cap to take that off.
I don't know what it says semi site Archibald Alshot or
something. And that was probably the
company in, I don't know, Blackburn that made those.
So the Archibald, Archibald Alshot fuel cap filler would go
on to that. And then everything is sort of
tailor made. So when you do that up, so it's
on this little thing here like that, there is a micro switch
here which pushes in. So you put it on, you lock up
the fuel cap or the engineers would that pushes that in.
And then in the cockpit, you know, that panel's done up.
But again, if we, you know, if we'd lost something like this
panel to try and replicate that panel and reproduce, it would
take, you know, somebody a week to build that.
And in fact, when I was in South Africa a couple of months ago
working for Lord Leahy, then we found a piece of paper and we
were going through these lightning spares for Lord Leahy
and we found a panel. And so I looked at this panel
and it was a panel like this. And I looked at it and it was in
a, in a brown piece of cloth, but inside the cloth was a piece
of paper. And so I opened the panel and it
was a panel for the nose wheel or something.
And in there was a job card. And it was a job card from
English Electric. And it was 1964.
And it was the name of the guy was Gazinia or something, Albert
Gazinia. And this guy was a an
apprentice, but he put all his record of his week's work.
So he'd come in at 8:00 in the morning, finished at 4:00 in the
afternoon. He'd done 8 hours work and he'd
been paid 6 shillings and fourpence.
And what he'd made that week was this panel roughly, and it was
all recorded on this double piece of paper.
So I gave this to Lord Leahy. He was very impressed by all
this sort of stuff. But it just goes to show you
that one man at Linglich Electric will have spent one
week getting a panel like that riveting all this on making all
the curves, you know, this very, you know, intricate way of
having a hinge or you know, all this sort of the flange in here
is superb. You know, it was just absolutely
handmade so that flange would fit in there perfectly and then
you know, it's literally hand built by machine, so.
So is that true for all lightnings or is that just the?
People. Yeah, I think it is pretty much,
I think every single lightning that was built was hand built
and every single panel, I mean, these ones would obviously be a
bit simpler. But that panel that I found in
South Africa was a nose wheel panel.
And it was, you know, about that long, we'll see it on the on the
cockpit that long with a couple of little brackets on it and a
handmade thing by a guy who spent the whole week.
And that's what he produced. And if you think there were 350
Lightnings or so, he must have made 350 of those panels.
And that's his life's work. And I find that fascinating that
those people don't exist anymore.
You know it'll be done by 3D modelling or whatever it was, or
a machine. Just while we're talking about
parts and panels and things like that, then in terms of the
restoration, have you an inventory?
Do you know what you've got, what you haven't got yet?
Do you know if you can get the stuff you need?
Are you going to have to fabricate stuff from scratch?
Where are you at with that? Do we have an inventory?
Yeah, it's in my head. There are books and books of
lightning manuals, and in the Lightning manual you can look at
a manual and there will be a side drawing like that and it
will go 67 P and it will tell you what that panel is and it
will go 69 P so port 69. That's actually my favourite
panel. And then 76 P, so that would be
that panel and you, you can tell where every panel goes, but
they're all in my head now. So I can look at this fuselage
now. So I can with you, Steve, I can
look at this and go right, OK, those little fasteners for the
number 2 engine hats are missing.
So we need to find those. There's a panel there which is
missing on the fin. Other than that, that's us
pretty complete. So I am as a pilot, I know the
exterior of the aircraft and I can tell what's missing and
what's not there. But Milton, my go to guru, he
will come along and go, ah, you need this bolt here to fit the
wings in. And that bolt there is probably
an Armstrong and Whitworth 4 and 4 eighths three quarter inch
steel compressed bolt, which doesn't exist anymore.
So I glibly said, oh, just get another one.
We just put another bolt in there.
He said, no, you've got to have this bolt and this bolt's up
here. And so as an exclusive for 10%
True, I'm going to show you something that no one has ever
seen before. No, I'm not.
There's there's a nut that goes on the end of that.
It's turning, but it Oh my goodness, my hands, it's
turning, but it's not going to come off unfortunately.
And it's called a castellated nut.
And a castellated nut is slightly different because it's
got like a top of a castle on it and you can put it on there,
tighten it and then put a split pin through the top.
So there's all sort of things like that.
And it seems to me that every single nut and bolt in the
Lightning is different. So the nut and bolt that goes
there is going to be different to that bolt is going to be
different to that bolt is going to be different to that bolt.
So there's no, there's nothing you can sort of go well that'll
fit that one, that'll fit that one, but it doesn't.
What does that mean for the restoration though?
So you're obviously not going to fly it again.
There's been some question of whether or not you're intending
to run it again. Does it?
Is it material to the project? If you don't have those bolts I.
Think as long as you've got half the bolts, being a pilot, I
think, you know, as long as you've got half the bolts, it'll
be fine. That's OK.
What what I, I sort of have AI suppose a bit of a sort of a
geekiness about me in that I would never want to do something
like say, for example, the wings, but you know, we had to
cut these off to fit the wings in.
I wouldn't do that because I always like to think that if we
do this properly and we put it back together in 100 years time,
somebody could come back and go, well, it hasn't been cut.
We could make that fly. So I think that's unlikely that
it would ever fly. But never say never, you know,
And if we could ever, ever have that one in a million chance
that it would fly, then good luck to us.
And there might be something out there with deep pockets that
goes, yeah, I want to fly. I want to have it ground run.
And if we could get it to ground run, then, you know, Even so
that that's not as good as flying, but it's still pretty
good. What about electric?
So I was looking inside earlier and I can see that, I mean the
presumably the electrical system is fairly straightforward, but I
can see the bundles of the wires have been just cut straight
through. So are you, are you, are you
planning on wiring it? You to what degree are you sort
of bolting it together as opposed to restoring?
I'm actually really, really worried now because I hadn't
noticed that. So I'd I'd not noticed that the
wires have been cut. But yeah, I'll, I'll have a
look. But thanks for pointing that out
to. Me, Steve.
It could be the. It could be that I misidentified
something that didn't have a connector.
Well. Maybe we're going to have a look
at those right now because it's a big thing.
No, the the wiring, actually the wiring and the Lightning was all
inside the fuselage originally. So all the wiring that went from
the radar and electrical systems was was routed through the
fuselage when they realised that was a really stupid thing to do.
Because when it gets really hot in here, wiring is in a, in a
plastic sheath. So that plastic sheath gets
hotter and hotter and hotter and then gets brittle and then it'll
crack. Or if you have a fire in here,
if it, if the fire is a flash fire and it goes through the
wiring, then you're up, up the creep that paddle.
So what they did was they took the wiring and they put it into
a conduit on the outside of the aircraft.
And then there were just literally you can't see it on
these, but on my other Lightning, on a Mark 6
Lightning, there are cables that are that thick of individual
strands of wiring that go down inside the fuselage.
Yeah, I've seen those. Those are in the front, front
left and yeah, yeah, OK. And so you've got to know and
they're not labelled so to, to work the say, I don't know the
master reference gyro, I don't know how they know which one
does it and where it goes and where the generator goes,
etcetera, etcetera. So yes, the, there's no plan at
the moment to do the wiring. And I guess here as well, if we
look in here, I don't know where, I think that's probably a
fuel pipe and then there'll be hydraulic pipes in here as well.
But a fuel pipe has this little nipple on the end of it which
has to be tightened up and made sort of leak proof.
And as soon as that becomes loose, then you end up, because
this is a high pressure fuel system, if you have a leak out
of the nipple, it flies across there, it goes on to the engine
or the jet pipe and then you have a flash fire.
So what they did was they tighten the nipple up as much as
they could, then they wrapped it with elastic bands.
With elastic. Bands with elastic bands and the
reason for that is because if you have a leaky nipple, the
thing that you want to have is not to have the the fuel coming
flying out that way. But if you wrap it in elastic
bands, the fuel seeps out the back so it's it's less of a fire
risk. And all these pipes as you can
see so this pipe here might be a high pressure fuel pipe and it
will have a so it comes around here if you're following it.
So let's say this is one of the fuel pipes.
It has a, it has a 90° bend in here, then it goes to here, has
100 has a 60° bend in here, a 90° bend in here, and then it
goes along here and has a 20° bend in here.
And that fuel pipe is specific to that part of the aeroplane
and it's, it's unique. And then you can see that if you
have a leak in there or a crack in there, then they've got to go
and find and manufacturer a specific piece of pipe that long
to go from here to here. So it's it's a nightmare.
And then when you're talking about, I mean, I've obviously
I'd seen this a long time before you, Steve, but when you're
talking about electrical wires being cut, I can now see that,
yeah, they have been cut. So if you were going to make it
run, I think what you would probably do is take all that out
and put some, you'd go to somebody that writes computer
software and then get get some new wiring put in because it'd
make life easier. But all that wiring as well like
that, you can just see is, is brittle.
And yeah, it's never, you know, you'd have to do it in a in a
Safeway. And in addition to fuel and
hydraulics, that's probably an air pipe.
So this air pipe that produces air conditioning, you know, is a
specific shape and that that fits in there.
So in in the stores department, in a Lightning squad and there
would be racks and racks and racks of that pipe, that pipe
fuel, air pipe, electrical fuses, relays, you know, all
sorts of millions of pieces that are specific to this particular
aeroplane. While we're on the subject of
electrics, are there any electrics in the aeroplane?
You've got any black boxes that you need to buy?
These are all just. Is it all just electrical as
opposed to? I think when you say black
boxes, I think it would be valves and stuff in that era.
So there's nothing really that's Gucci, OK, But that would be
more in the cockpit, I think. I think in here there's nothing
black box wise. Are you talking more like ECM
or? No, I'm thinking like, you know,
any gyros, anything that sits in a big box that.
No, I think like here you can see this, there's a box down
there which has got 24 volts DCI guess that's a fuse box and
that's about it. Down the back.
If we want to have a walk around here, there's a thing in here
which you can't see because it's covered up with Detroiters or
something. However, some flash word he
used, there's thing called a Hobson's field Control unit.
And that's the thing which, so when you're flying at 200 knots,
the stick force feels like that. This is a bit like stirring
porridge. So you, you can tell.
And this is the one thing about a Lightning is it's like no
other aeroplane is that if you blindfolded me now maybe if you
didn't blindfold it'd be very dangerous.
But if you had me in a blindfold and you put me in a Lightning in
A2 seater for example, I shut my eyes.
And I shut my eyes 30 seconds and the guy said to me, OK, put
your hands on the control column.
I could probably do that a couple of times and tell you how
fast we were going just by going, OK, I know it's sort of
like that in the aeroplanes. I could feel it.
And I don't know how they did it, but they have this fantastic
ability to give you this, what I call the man machine interface.
So you literally strap this on and then you went faster and
slower and it was part of your body, so you knew what speed you
were doing, what G you were pulling just by the way the
aeroplane felt. And that was down there
somewhere in the thing called a Hobson's Field Control unit or
something. And it was a spring, so that as
you went to 600 knots, the stick force became a little bit tight
and so you could be a bit more twitchy.
But it wasn't in the stage like a jet province.
If you went 400 knots, a jet province, you became like this.
You'd be trying to control it. This was beautifully balanced.
It was like an old or an old girlfriend.
It was like just something that was perfectly harmonised.
So they got that, absolutely. Right.
So the last time we did this, I sort of embarrassed you a bit by
saying you were Mr Lightning, which you then refuted and said
there's lots more people. But I am surprised at how much
you know about the way the aeroplane works.
You know, most pilots have to know a certain amount about how
the aeroplane works or to be able to safely operate it, but
you seem to know a great deal. Where does that?
Come from I'm actually Mr Volvo, that is my passion so.
Your Volvo sounds terrible so. I'm actually Mr Volvo who knows
nothing about why my engine's making a noise like a tractor,
but I don't know. I just, I, every single thing
about the Lightning fascinates me.
And maybe I'm just that one guy in a million who's got an
obsession and a, a slight perversion and a kink about
Lightnings. You know, for example, here is
where the brake parachute went. So you put the brake parachute
under there in that, in that little recess underneath.
And then you pulled out under the bumper here, 2 very thick
steel cables, which if they frayed, they would, they would
slice your finger open, bearing in mind that the grand crew
would change these just after you landed.
So this would be 600° when you landed, maybe 500°.
This would be red hot, white hot.
And then they would run along like in a Formula One team, and
they'd take the old shoot out and they put the new shoot in
and they do it in about 30 seconds.
They put the new shoot in. It's incredibly complicated.
It's a real skill and art of putting the shoot in, then
putting a little device in and closing the doors, pull the
steel cable out. And then in a figure of eight, a
guy would get up on a ladder, put a shoot bolt on the top like
a thing you put through a cow to stun it before you put it into
Waitrose. You put this big bolt in there
and then you'd get this cable and they would then literally
push it into these clips around there.
And then you go off and you fly it Mac 2 or 600 miles an hour,
and it would stay in there. Occasionally it would come out
and you'd have this big cable flying behind you.
And then when you landed, you pull the chute.
And so the chute comes out, the parachute, and then it's held on
by that bolt in the cable there and is then 30 feet behind you,
a big parachute held on. And that slows you down.
And it's stuff like that that I think it's so Meccano and it's
so 1950s. It's not like a phantom with a
hook and a parachute that was in a, you know, container or a
mirage that had a little special Gucci Dasso Louis Vuitton
luggage cantainer with your parachute, the parachute which
would go in the back. The lightning was literally
British. It was so British it was
unbelievable. And and that's why I think I've
just got this obsession with it. I don't know when it'll ever
end, maybe after Goodwood, but I maybe I'll think of something
else. Maybe I'll find another Volvo,
you know, who knows? But well, wait a minute.
So you're you're call sign collective.
And so budget's here. She's not on camera, but she's
part of it. But there is you, there are
others involved in this venture. And so there will be something
after the lightning, presumably. Is that not the point of?
The I'll pass you over to to Yeah.
And you know, it's been a lot of fun and it's been a lot of work.
And I'm sort of, I pinch myself that budget and I have actually
done this together pretty much on our own for the last nine
months. But as I said, it is it's a huge
amount of fun. And everybody that's supported
us in Course Line Collective has been brilliant.
You know, if they really get behind us just by buying a book
by, you know, subscribing to something, it might only be £5,
but that pays for those bolts to be fixed in, you know, they're
going to be part of being a Goodwood.
If it wasn't for them, that wouldn't be a Goodwood because
I'm not going to pay for it. I'm just not going to pay for
it. Well, we are a little bit in our
time. So it has been an adventure and
next year, who knows, it might be a Buccaneer.
I could give you an exclusive, we might have a Buccaneer as our
project to do somewhere in the world, who knows?
But the Core Sign Collective will always be involved in
aviation and try to bring people the other side of aviation, I
suppose. So that's why our newsletters
are a little bit more edgy than other people's newsletters.
Yeah, you do need to subscribe to the newsletter.
You're not already doing that. Tell me about Goodwood, then.
So the we, we did talk about it last time, but are you any
further in arranging that? What are the time scales for
putting this together? Will it definitely turn up
polished? Is it You know how?
How fraught is the plan? If I was being clear, I'd say
how long was a piece of string? And yeah, of course it will.
Yeah, it's that's it. Yeah, we're, we're committed.
We're going to have it at Goodwood in the end of September
1617. Assembled.
Assembly and it will be on display, it will be polished and
it will be the P1B and it'll be the first time it's been there.
But to get there we've got to find somewhere.
And the reason, excuse me, we didn't have it here at secret
location is because we don't have the facilities, which is
why it's going to get a Manson. And before Goodwill we'll have
it reassembled. So we know that everything's you
know, like, for example, who knew that these bolts, which are
incredibly important were just lying in the bottom there?
And have we put those in the trailer tomorrow bouncing down
the M12A12? You know, if you'd have found
one of those in the front of your windscreen, we'd have been
really upset as I'm supposed you would be.
But we, we want to make sure that we can put it together at
Manson. There'll be a couple of events
there which you'll obviously be invited to 10% true.
And we'll know then that it's ready.
We did have a bit of a think, well, I personally did that.
If we suddenly realised we weren't going to make anyone out
of time, could we do 1/2 and then leave it as it was and do
the other half polished? But no, I think we'll, I think
we'll get there and everyone's, but people at Manson are
fantastic. You know, they're really keen
to, to see this and get this done and they're really good.
And John, the painter guy, he's like a machine, as is Milton.
The the really big what if question is, if we go around
here, is this fin here so I can give you an exclusive thief.
So this fin fillet, I don't know where the rest of the fin is.
I'm hoping that farmers. It's in the barn store.
Is it OK? So this fin fillet here, if you
imagine on the original aircraft would go straight along and then
up to the what's called the witch's hat fin, a standard big
fin. But when they put the big fuel
tank on the bottom and also the red top missiles, they realised
that when they went high speed they were losing a bit of
directional control. So they wanted to make the fin
bigger, and there's a test pilot of VNE over X + Y / Z which will
tell you that as you go faster, you need more fin authority.
So they built this bigger fin, but I don't actually like it
because it's not representative of lightning.
And now the big question is you can see there where it's been
manufactured. Can we take that off, put in the
original spine and do a small restoration on the fin and turn
the aeroplane back into as it was on the naming ceremony and
again, as a bit of an exclusive, I went to a very secret scrap
yard in the middle of England and I'd been to a place in
Lincolnshire that morning. I've cut my leg badly on a piece
of lightning and I had to phone a nurse and she said there you
think you'll be OK, just put some sellotape on it.
It's all right. So I was bleeding profusely from
my leg. I drove all the way across the
UK and I found this scrap yard and there was always this sort
of, I don't know, it's a bit like the Holy Grail.
It's a bit like Atlantis, you know, it's a myth that there was
a Lightning fuselage and also a lightning fin from a Mark 1
Lightning in this scrap yard and RAF Stafford in 1960 or
something. They cleared everything out and
they cleared out fuselages like this, three of them brand new,
and three or four fins from Mark 1 Lightning.
And there was always sort of folklore that they still
existed. So I thought it was part of P1B.
I would go and try and find out if that myth was true.
So I got there, still bleeding profusely, obviously not gone to
A&E and no sympathy from any of my nurse friends and got to the
scrap yard and it was a fully working scrap yard.
And I'm sure if you've ever been to 1, they're not for the faint
hearted. Those sort of places, there's
people rushing around, there's people crushing fridges, there's
people crushing citrons, there's people doing deals in the corner
with this sort of white powdery stuff.
It's a dangerous place and I went there as a sort of a fairly
well spoken bloke and said I don't suppose you've got any
bits of an aeroplane in in your scrap yard.
And he said, Oh yeah, he said go down the end, go past the skips
and they're in the bushes. So I hobbled along there and in
this scrap yard was a pile and a mound of aircraft parts and I
was looking for the Holy Grail and I could see this big part of
a wing and I didn't know what that was from.
And I saw an intake from a javelin.
I thought, well, that's, you know, going back a bit, maybe
we're in luck, but I couldn't find the Holy Grail.
And then I found a fusage like this and it was in the bushes
and it was all a bit bashed. I thought, OK, we haven't quite
found what we wanted. And then I found this skip and
under the skip I saw this red, white and blue fin flash and
there it was, was a lightning tail with a skip on top of it
that had been there for 50 years.
So I went back and I said to the guy, you know what, what do I
have to do? He said we'll take the skip off
and we'll weigh it and we'll charge you a pound, a kilo,
whatever it is. So hopefully if we've got the
brain width and the capacity, we will try and get that fin from
the guy, see if it hasn't been bashed around too much, if we
can restore it. And even if we haven't, then we
could maybe have it alongside the P1B to show what the
original fin was like. And then the next problem we've
got is to try and get this lightning fin from a secret
location in the middle of the UK near Stafford, actually in a
stoke back down to Mansden and get it fixed.
How are you going to move this thing if it's assembled to I'm?
Going to fly it, don't tell anybody, but I'm going to fly
it. No, we'll have to take it apart
again. So when we, if we sort of move
to this part here, So I've talked about how the wings go
in. If we look at the the forward
fuselage and I know Milton will be sort of going, no, what's he
doing? What's he saying now?
He's making a mistake. There are these little holes in
here, that's where the bolts go for the fuselage attachments.
So the fuselage will go onto here and then literally 4 little
bolts will go into there and it will be pinned together.
So you take the nose off and then you slide the wings out,
you unbolt the wings together and that's it.
So you know, other bits of where you put the gear down, put the
nose wheel down, stuff like that.
But really it's a 2 day job according to Milton.
You know who knows what he's talking about?
We'll get Milton on Yeah for the next episode.
So all this sort of stuff in here you won't see.
So in terms of you know, sort of corrosion and stuff, we won't do
that. We'll give it a spray of W 40 or
something, but we don't need to, you know, we won't be, you know,
adjusting that spring and stuff like that.
So we'll, we'll literally be settling it, I think where?
Where are you at with? Sponsorship, well the book's
still selling well and still available, which is good.
And we've had rust In's who've given us some polishing
products, which is good. And we've had a fantastic
transport company, MRA in Halesworth here, who have been
beyond brilliant. They, I mean, it's, it's, you
know, part of a, you know, probably a 10 minute programme,
but I spent probably three months trying to get into my
head without an Excel spreadsheet because I don't do
that sort of malarkey. How we're going to move the
lightning from here to Goodwood. And everybody said, oh, you got
to contact this guy. And there's folklore in aviation
of, you know, Jim Smith, he, he's the best guy who can do
this, or Charlie McGregor, he's the Gress guy.
And they know how to move stuff and everything.
And in the end, the owners, Giles and Julian, they knew a
local haulage company and they did it and they moved the wings
down to Halesworth. And Ian, the driver, he's a bit
like, you know, when you went to the fun fair and you had, you
put the 1 penny in all the, it's probably like 10 lbs now.
And the little arm comes out like the little disabled arm, it
goes down and it picks up a ball or something and it puts it and
drops it in there. Ian was like a guy like that on
steroids. So he was at the, the controls
of the, the lorry and he was picking up the wings and he was
sort of moving them within one millimetre to two millimetre.
So can we just move it like tilt it 5° to left or five?
Yep, do that, do that. And he literally put the two
wings next to each other within, you know, half an inch or so.
So he was, he saved our day when we moved to Manson.
So hopefully he'll do the same with this.
So we have MRA have been the best guys ever.
So by the time this episode goes out, the rest of this airframe
will have gone to Manson. So this airframe here, we have
nose fuselage, we've got the wings down there.
The bits are missing, the tailplane, the tail thin, the
stabilators, the engine hatch under the bottom there #1 engine
hatch. And I don't think we'll take the
ventral tank with us, the fuel tank.
So under here where you can see a bit like a bikini line there,
that's where the ventral tank would fit it on.
But if we put that on, we've got to paint it, we've got to clean
it, and then we've got to bolt it on.
And actually when it was crystaled lightning, it didn't
have that on there. So I think we'll just leave that
off to save a bit of time. And so you did mention at the
beginning you've talked about the patina on the aeroplane.
You want to preserve these stencils, the original stencils.
Do you need help doing that? Are you looking for people who
are experts in chemicals? Or to be honest, to be able to
restore without damaging anybody sleep, particularly people who
would do media, it's called media blasting or dry ice
blasting, which will allegedly will take that varnish off but
not take the #4 off. If we can do that, all the
better. Or somebody that can create a
transfer that could go over the top of that, say, for example, a
decal. And you know, we're, we're happy
to work with anybody. And so far, as I said, everybody
we've worked with. Oh, another exclusive for you.
So we had a meeting with Asus High Gallery and maybe I
shouldn't say this, but probably a bit too late now we are
getting a painting Commission or they are getting a painting
Commission of the P1B. So the P1B had this one, X847853
and 856. They have an artist who's going
to do a painting, a beautiful idea of the three prototypes all
together doing a tail chase. So we're going to have that
done, They're going to sell them, and we're hopefully going
to have a sort of a lightning fest at Acer Site Gallery in
July where I'm going to give a talk.
There'll be some lightning partners there, some signatures,
etcetera, and a bit of a lightning day.
And then we'll sell prints and they're going to donate some
prints to us. So they've been amazingly good
as well. So thank you, Caroline and
Colin. One of the things that we think
would be fantastic is to have AP1B watch.
So a particular watch that's designated to the P1B.
So we're working on that. Whether we'll get that done in
time for Goodwood, who knows? Yeah, it's, it's work in
progress. You know, we've got so much for
the two of us going on, getting this down here that things have
sort of slipped a bit on that side, on the merchandising side.
But we've got, yeah, we've got our fastest Fury T-shirts, we've
got our patches, we've got our pins from the subscriptions that
you can get all sorts of stuff, which would be good.
OK, so from the episode point of view, next time we see you,
we'll probably be at Manson. Yep.
We're going to try and get Milton onto the channel to talk
about some. Milton's your technical guru.
He's Mr Lightning engineer. Let's say.
He knows all about how to put them together.
He's done that before. He's got his own lightning.
So we'll get him on the channel and get talking to him about the
intricacies of doing the assembly, the reassembly.
What do you, what do you think the time scales are then for
having this ready? Because you, I think you said
that you were going to do some event days at Manston Co-op,
which is Rich Cooper who's been on the channel before.
He's going to bring some of his sort of photo mates along and do
some kind of shoot. What are the time scales for
that? So I was going to say something
really witty and say well we're currently January and we've got
loads of time, but actually we're May, we're May the 5th or
the 6th, I can't remember which day it is.
So we've got what we've got May, June, July, August, September.
We've got about four months. And yes, we've got something
with Co-op planned and the plan will be with Co-op is to have
the aeroplane fully assembled with a ladder on the cockpit
with the cockpit open. And those guys do do amazing
photographs and amazing sort of replications and dioramas and
things. So we'll have access to the
cockpit. We may have a guy in, you know,
1950s flying suit, whatever they want to do with a couple of red
tops or a couple of Fire St missiles alongside it parked
outside I think at Manson. So it'll be towed out, put
outside, and there'll be a couple of other private events,
maybe a big one for our subscribers, which would be nice
as a thank you for them. And then there's another private
event at the airport for a helicopter company.
So as much as we can get done, and obviously we're going to
have to, we'll have to have a stop sometime in August,
probably around about, I don't know, 20th of August or so.
So we've got a month before we can transport, take it apart,
transport it all down to Goodwood and then put it
together at Goodwood. OK, nothing difficult.
Sounds good. Well, lucky.
Thanks again. Pleasure.
Appreciate it. Good luck with the next step and
look forward to seeing you again soon.
Awesome. Thank you for having us.