Originally Posted by
Haraka
AIDN was up for sale c, 1971 for 6000 quid.( IIRC Hampshire Club?)
I ( naively) tried to get a consortium together to buy it for a University of London Air Squadron centred team,plus others , and base it at White Waltham in our hangar.We had a core of appropriate ( e,g, ex Harvard) potential instructors .
It seemed so do able.
Silly Boy!
At that time there would have been some Airshow/promotion income available to help with flying costs, and also lots of expertise around post the BoB film, but also the costs of an engine/prop OH would have been difficult to cover without some sort of paying passenger income (not really available then). Not sure when DN needed a substantial re skin, but that would have been another substantial cost not easily recouped.
BAC would have been the ideal partner from a support point of view, but I think they were struggling with the difficulty of being part of an industry trying to compete on a world market. It could have been a fantastic
PR machine for Rolls Royce but they were embroiled in their own financial crisis around that time. The factor against the two-seater was the standard rear canopy spoilt the classic look of the machine and I think this rather affected its popularity, and certainly NG made the decision to alter his due to that.
Nothing silly about trying, its the history of aviation.