Chugalug,
The difficulty is that this saga is so full of "most likely"s. I am rather hoping that we may hear from Slow Flyer, for by all accounts he did much of the engineering work needed to prepare the Narellan Vengeance for display, and though perhaps not an instrument specialist himself, he would surely know something of the history of the cockpit furniture in it. For it is a truly wondrous thing.
If only we could get hold of someone who flew them or in them in their TT role, we could ask him, but the chances of finding any more pilots or engineers of that era are vanishingly slim now, and when you narrow it down to the small number of TT operators, it must be nil.
I am at a disadvantage as I've never even seen an A-35, and my memory of the contents of my A-31s is growing mistier by the year. Of course the A-31 must have had a full kit of night flying lighting, but as I never recall switching my nav lights on even once in the three years I had them, I wouldn't have an idea where to look for the switches. And this specimen has all kinds of coloured lights under a wing and Lord knows what else besides - no wonder the lower panel has such a mass of bolt-on switchgear.
An A-31 certainly had no landing or taxi lights, I'm sure about that. But nobody in India/Burma ever tried to fly them at night: we never even considered the possibility. As for the USAAC, they didn't want the A-35 by night or by day and never attempted to use them operationally.
Certainly the Technical College disposed of the A-31 front cockpit panels early on, and got an A-35 set from another scrapyard, but what went into it after that is anybody's guess. I am satisfied now that EZ999 is an A-31, but the rest is guesswork. Do I concur ? Yes, I do !
MPN11,
Unlikely as it sounds, your idea is the only one in town so far. Or it could be a "clothes-horse" to dry your kit in the monsoon ? Really, the longer I look at it, the more mystified I am. One of the long members has a series of holes drilled in it, obviously to make adjustments - but for what ?
I'm beginning to think that we've learned as much as we shall ever know of the hidden life of EZ999 !
Cheers, both, Danny.