Update 6 - March 2023
On 23rd March the Trustees officially gave approval to RPM Aviation to carry out the recovery of our Viking G-AGRW from Bad Voslau airfield in Austria. A small team of supporters have volunteered to travel out to Austria on Friday 21st April for a weekend of preparatory work before RPM begin the full dismantling the following week. The aircraft will be loaded onto 3 lorries for the 1000 mile journey to Blackbushe, planned to take place during the weekend of 29th/30th April. There are a number of factors affecting this schedule so we cannot give an accurate estimate yet of the arrival day at Blackbushe. To ensure you receive regular updates as the delivery journey commences please join our supporters WhatsApp group by emailing team@blackbusheheritagetrust.com.
Once the aircraft arrives back at Blackbushe we hope to have it partly reassembled for the Air Day on Saturday 3rd June. BHT will have a large presence at the event where we will tell the story so far and the exciting plans for the future. If you have not already bought your tickets, they are available from www.blackbusheairday.com
Our fundraising has continued at a pace during the last few weeks with two excellent talks. The first was on 16th February by expert Blackbushe historian Rob Belcher. Rob has been researching the history of the airfield for many years and is the author of two very interesting books. His talk was titled ‘RAF Hartfordbridge at War’ and covered the period from construction to 1946. He will be returning for Part 2 in October.
Richard Dyett gave us a detailed insight into Air Traffic Control Flow Management on 23rd March. Richard had a 40-year career in Air Traffic spending the second half working for Eurocontrol in Brussels. We all came away with a broad understanding of this complex subject. A huge thank you to both Rob and Richard for taking the time to speak to us. We are very grateful to Blackbushe Airport for providing use of the Pathfinder and the complimentary hot drinks, also to Pete Vickery for running his ‘pop up’ raffle. All this makes these evenings a big success, thank you to all of you who have attended them.
Our talks programme now takes a break for the summer months. We will instead be holding supporter meetings at the Pathfinder and we look forward to updating you all on our progress as well as meeting new faces. Our talks will resume in September.
We were really pleased to meet Henry Theobald. Henry is one of the team that moved Viking G-AGRU from the RAF Museum at Cosford to Brooklands in 1991. We were thrilled to be presented with his scrapbook of photos from the project. These are proving very useful to ascertain how we will dismantle G-AGRW.
We are very grateful to Mike Biddulph who has created a BHT banner and table surround to use at our fundraising events. Page 2 contains a list of the events which we plan to attend this summer. We are still looking for volunteers to help us out at some of them, if you are interested please email us.
There are a lot of second hand books and models to sell during the next few months, Richard Dyett and James Burton have done an excellent job cataloguing all the books, numbering around 500 in total. Pat has also connected power to the trailer which has made working in there during the winter months slightly easier. If you would like to view the list of available books, again please email us.
Henry Theobald presenting Trustee Pat Marchant with his scrapbook documenting G-AGRUs move to Brooklands.
Rob Belcher just before giving his excellent talk ‘RAF Hartfordbridge at War’.