Project News

** UPDATE 2 May 2021 You have done it! Thank you so much for your generosity. We have been able to reach our £1,000 fundraising target in only a week! We are very grateful for all of you that supported us with donations via Paypal and direct to our account. We now have the funds in place to make a start THIS MONTH on these works, and we'll be posting updates abou...

We were conscious of the dirt building up on G-ARPO, so took the opportuniy this weekend to give her a wash (one side, at least; we'll hopefully do the other soon). It was great to see her shining in the sun again once we'd finished.

Following on from our work last weekend painting the horizontal stabiliser (read the article here), we took advantage of the good weather this weekend to paint the vertical tail fin in bright, Northeast yellow. Obviously we could only do half (or a little over half) of the fin as we would need a crane to flip it over. But by doing this we take a little step closer to com...

This past weekend we managed to get a big milestone completed in the restoration of G-ARPO. The horizontal stabiliser, which was removed before we transported the Trident to Sunderland, was painted in the bright yellow colours of Northeast Airlines. While we are not yet in a position to reattach the tail and wings to the fuselage, this process helps to protect the stabil...

Over the past month we've been working on the wing stubs that are still attached to Trident G-ARPO. We spent a lot of time (and elbow grease) polishing the port side leading edges, which now shine like new! We have also sanded the top of the wing and painted it an authentic grey colour in keeping with Northeast Airlines. Next step is to work on the starboa...

While the world has been on lockdown we've been doing what we can to look after our Trident. Naturally we're really sad that we haven't been able to open G-ARPO up to visitors so far this year, but we will be back as soon as it's safe. In the meantime, we've been carrying out a schedule of works and maintenance. Last weekend we worked on painting the nosewheels and su...

Following our recent work to protect the landing gear legs on our Trident, this past week we also worked on the tyres to make them a bit smarter. Here you can see Tony painting the tyres with wheel paint. Their long years outside in all kinds of weather means they had become quite faded. The finished result looks much nicer and, combined with the freshly painted legs...

Last weekend we did some work on the port side main landing gear leg of G-ARPO. Sitting outside in the open air over time leads to metal corroding and rust forming, so we took the time to clean up the leg and the underside of the wing stub. We then applied a coat of protective paint, and then a layer of white paint The leg looks really smart again. We'll be doing t...

We took the opportunity of some good drying weather to give our Trident a wash last weekend. Using some good grime remover, the winter's dirt came off the fuselage easily, leaving G-ARPO shining in the sun. The rain even made an appearance later to give it a final rinse. Remember we'll be starting our regular opening days in April, on the 2nd and 4th Saturdays of...