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Header image: 2016 Experience Day prize winner Karen Shortland and her guests watching Hurricane LF363’s pilot ‘crew in’ from close range (All photos: Clive Rowley)

The RAF Memorial Flight Official Club ballot prize for March is a fantastic, ‘money cannot buy’, chance of a lifetime, Experience Day at the BBMF at RAF Coningsby on one of the planned weekend flying days during the display season.

The lucky winner will be able to bring up to three guests to RAF Coningsby on Saturday 24th June, which is Armed Forces Day. The BBMF is always heavily committed to supporting events on these occasions and, weather permitting, it promises to be an extremely busy day at the Flight’s HQ at RAF Coningsby.

Header image: Lancaster PA474 in the Stephenson Hangar at Duxford in late February. (All photos: courtesy of the Aircraft Restoration Company)

Work on the BBMF Lancaster, by a full-time team of nine Aircraft Restoration Company technicians in the Stephenson Hangar at Duxford, has been progressing well. Having completed the deep strip and inspection, many parts are starting to go back onto the bomber’s airframe. The bomb bay doors are now back in place and the undercarriage legs and tail plane are being re-fitted. A number of sheet metal repairs have been carried out to airframe skins as the accompanying photographs show.

Header image: Hurricane Mk IIC PZ865 in flight (photo: Mark Meades)

Forty-five years ago this month, on Wednesday 29th March 1972, Hawker Siddeley’s Chief Test Pilot, Duncan Simpson OBE, landed Hurricane PZ865 at RAF Coltishall behind a Lightning jet fighter of the Station’s Operational Conversion Unit. He taxied to the aircraft servicing pan, adjacent to the BBMF hangar, and shut down. He was not expected and nor was the fact that he was delivering this precious, company-owned artefact of the nation’s aviation heritage into the hands of the RAF’s Memorial Flight.