English Electric Lightning

I'm not jealous..................err yes i am Brilliant news Richard. I will try and find some shots of XS420 in service.

Awesome.......you lucky, lucky ..........

Hope to see her one day.

That's great news, I hope you will be very happy with your new purchase

My other car is a .... LIGHTNING

Thank you all for your kind comments they are much appreciated. It would be great if Mike and I could meet some of you down at FAST in the future. We would love to show you round the museum and of course XS420.

Steve - we have had word with the CAA but they wont let us fly her - so sad to say we may not make next years airshows

Rich - she will definitely be at Legends - in spirit if in not in solid form

Jason - Many thanks for the photo's

Again thanks all.

Excellent Richard what a thing to own.
Bit of a problem at the car wash

I worked on Lightnings for 15 years a love/hate relationship as any ex-Lightning engineer will tell you. The T5 trainer that you have would, in my opinion, look better with the full 600 gallon ventral tank (No 1 Hatch Tank) and not that silly slipper tank. The export version, T55, was part wired for electrical supplies to a gun pack but I don't think that the RAF version (T5) was so a gun pack would not be appropriate. If things get tough from a maintainability point of view you can reduce her to just a cockpit. Is the cockpit complete?

Hi Peter - the cockpit at present is not complete but we have sourced 85% of the required parts and hope to acquire these parts very soon. Our aim is to keep her in one piece and we will be carrying out preservation work as issues dictate. All round she is in pretty good condition I think partly due to the excellent paint job the RAF did for her RIAT appearance in 2003 and also the way FAST have looked after her in the time there.

Be nice if you could take her to Brunty for cold War jets day Richard.

It would be nice to see her at Brunty Chris, but the cost to move her would be excessive. You will have to come South at some point so we can show you around FAST.