More lightning

Well 2 of them in fact!! The weekend proved to be a good one. The Lightning in question was XR724/AE (ex 5 squadron), and she ran like a dream. It was the first time in 2 years that the Lightning Association had run the engines in her and there were a few niggles (the first of which stopped the engine starting at all, but a bit of percussive maintenance soon sorted that out!). Unfortunately one of the niggles related to the engine exhaust petals, which weren’t moving as expected, and so the idea of running the engines with afterburner was scrubbed. There are a few things left to do to get her to a position to be able to do this, but all in all I felt the day went very well. It was awesome to see one of these beasts running at all (there are very few places where you can now see this, Bruntingthorpe being the main place in the UK). As for the photographs, well we’ll have to wait and see as I haven’t even looked at them yet!!

The second Lightning was in the garden of the owner of XR724, and was in fact XR725. Again, pictures to follow shortly, but it’s a damned better garden ornament than a bunch of gnomes!!!