EPW031096 ENGLAND (1929). Parked aircraft near Kisby's Farm including G-AACV, G-AACL, G-AAAA, G-AAHI, G-AAGE, G-EBJT and G-EBSA, Ecchinswell, 1929. This image has been produced from a damaged negative.

A combination of aviation industry leaders, fashionable people and "Moth'ers" calling in on Alan Muntz! It's great to have locations for these images at last.



Yours, Katy

Britain from Above Cataloguing Team Leader

Ecchinswell, near Newbury.

Just out of interest - the Prince of Wales bought a Gipsy Moth in October 1929 ... this wouldn't be a meet involving him, would it?



http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1935/1935%20-%200986.html

No joy. Oh well, google 'hatfield aerodrome from the air' and you'll get the full link!

For some reason the comments field has truncated the web address I gave in full. Try again here.



http://www.dhaetsa.org.uk/dhaets/documents/101457_hatfield_aerodrome_from_the_air_v2.pdf

I'm convinced this is not taken round Hatfield. If you look at this aerial photo of Hatfield in the early 1930s (scroll to just over half way down the page http://www.n5490.org/Pilots/Bill%20Grace/Bill%20Grace.html) and others taken in the early 1930s and 1947 published here (http://www.dhaetsa.org.uk/dhaets/documents/101457_hatfield_aerodrome_from_the_air_v2.pdf) you can see the surviving old non airfield fields round Hatfield are fairly large and rectilinear. If you compare with the reversed version of EPW031089 you can see the fields in the latter are generally much smaller and irregular in shape. The early 1930s photo of Hatfield in the PDF shows Harpsfield Hall and Sinclair's Farm. The mature trees round the buildings on that photo don't match anything on the set here. Also the entire landscape in the mystery set looks very rural, whereas in the early 1930s Hatfield photos there is clearly a lot of housing in the area, with well-established gardens ie not recently built in the few years between the October 1929 mystery set and the early 1930s Hatfield photos.

Hi all,



This image is a puzzler. We can document the histories of the aircraft in shot by virtue of their registration details. This shows that some of them were owned, on and off, by VIPs of the aviation world, including some people involved with the board of Aerofilms Ltd. But we have no location or information about the event. It could even be a private meeting of bigwigs landed near to the country house they were visiting...any suggestions for the location or event will be gratefully received! It may well turn out to be a local club or owners get-together, I'd love to know.



Yours, Katy

Britain from Above Cataloguing Team Leader

One of a series of 10 photos, EPW031086A, EPW031087A, EPW031088-EPW031091 and EPW031093-EPW031096.



Manor House 2 appears to be the focus as it is featured in three closeups (EPW031086A, EPW031087A, EPW031088) so this may have been where the air meet was based.

G-AAHI appears to be a de Havilland Gypsy Moth built in 1929 - so new when this photograph was taken. It apparently still performs aerobatic displays. At least it did recently - at Belvoir Castle on 21 August 2011.

[Source: www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?regsearch=G-AAHI]

A gathering of De Havilland Moths and other small aircraft. Two of these were lost in 1931 - one crashed at Crockernwell and the other over the English Channel