The Sparton aircraft came from RAF Little Rissington.
There were 6 of them ferried to Burnaston and we converted them for photo survey for Sparton.
After the work they were test flown at Burnaston by if my memory serves me by David Ogolviy ( Elstree CFI)
These test flights were something to behold ahhhhhhhh
Of the 6, 5 were delivered to Spartan and the last one sat at Burnaston in the storage hangar for a long time.
We used to take it out and run it from time to time. The Mossie had a priming pump outide the right nacelle just in front of the landing gear. As an aprentii i would get the job of priming the engine for start. The problem was that when you stood and primed the exhaust blew straight at you
Not bad if it was just red hot exhaust gas)
but as the engine was only run ever few months the lumps of carbon that came out were lethal
After a long period we got the aircraft out and readied for a potential customer. All polished and ready for inspection the purchaser's man arrived. A "lady" called Roberta Cowell, better know as a BoB fighter pilot Robert Cowell.
The idea was that he was going to break some long range record by flying at flight level tremendous, ( they were
PR's with 2 stage 2 speed SC), pick up the jet stream and go for ever !
Never happened and we eventually broke the aircraft up and burnt the fuselage. That was when I learned about the burn characteristics of Magnesium
