FAW.2 XN651 at Bletchley Park, 18th February 2001; author	FAW.2 XN696 at Walpole, 24th October 1999; author

Stored out of public view for some time, the nose of XN651 was bought by BARG in early 2001 and was pictured on display in their hangar/garage at the historic Bletchley Park (home to the now famous codebreakers of WWII). XN651 is remarkably complete considering it's former use in the School of Aircraft Handling (hence the SAH number on the nose), with almost all the radar intact. The cockpits are missing some bits and pieces, notably seats and pilot's instrument panel. She was recently acquired by Tony Collins who now intends to complete her restoration and already has the panel sorted out, but is still missing a few instruments plus the observer's radar screen and boot.

Tucked away in a shed at Walpole is XN696, which spent some years in storage at Farnborough. Incredibly she survived that not only intact (bar one item of which more shortly), but in excellent condition - the only missing instrument is the cockpit clock! The only problem the owner has is that the radome hinges were cut through instead of being removed correctly - and so far all his attempts to repair the hinges have been unsuccessful; they don't take kindly to being welded for a start!

FAW.2 XP925 at Haslemere, December 1999; Kevin Burchett	FAW.2(mod) XJ571 at Hurn, 3rd March 2004; Mark Russell

XP925's nose was donated to 1268 Squadron ATC by the DRA at Farnborough in December 1994. She had been on the airfield fire pit for a number of years and was a completely gutted shell. The first headache was to find enough of the parts required to make the restoration project feasible. With this done they now had what amounted to a 1/1 scale Airfix kit with no instructions and little glue. The learning curve would make a roller coaster ride look tame, but good, steady progress is being made. The Sea Vixen Preservation Group was formed and they have joined the British Aviation Preservation Council. Anyone in the Haslemere (Surrey) area wishing to get their hands dirty helping on the project can contact the project leader, Kevin Burchett (not forgetting to remove the .no.junk.mail part of that email address link).

Look, I know it's a motorbike, but it's got the twin tailboom, appropriate markings, an ejector seat, joystick, canopy jettison handle and instruments... it's quite a bit of work! The owner is a bit of a Sea Vixen fan as you can probably guess and no doubt this raised a few eyebrows on the roads!! Sadly thought like the real thing, this one has been retired to a museum and can now be found at Hurn, occasionally keeping the world's only airworthy Sea Vixen company. Information current as of 03/03/2004.

D.3 XS577 at Bruntingthorpe, 17th November 1998; author

A Sea Vixen that served rather different purposes in later life was XS577; converted from FAW.2 to D.3 standard and used for training drone pilots, it was operated for only a short time and then stored. In 1996 she was bought by Phoenix Aviation and scrapped, with the nose section kept by at Bruntingthorpe, but not on public display. The cockpits are lacking ejector seats and many instruments etc. are missing so it needs a lot of restoration before being useful as a public exhibit - while work had started, it has since moved on to a collector in Switzerland!