Just a nice picture

With the imminent closure of RAF Scampton, some based planes had to find a new home. So the Red Arrows aerobatic team has moved to RAF Waddington.

Hawker Hunter Aviation, a company that provides Red Air training facilities for the RAF has moved their Hawker Hunters to RAF Leeming.

Undoubtedly the most beautiful of their fleet is Hunter T72 XE688 (HABL/003035). The two-seater was built as a single seat RAF Mk4, XE704, but was later rebuilt as trainer FAC J-736 for the FA Chile.

It was acquired by EMBRAER as chaseplane PP-XHH in 2000. The plane was bought by Hawker Hunter Aviation in 2018, making its first post restoration flight in January 2020.

Strangely enough some source state that a dataplate in the landing gear well shows HABL/003031, which makes that the former EMBRAER plane at least carries some parts of the original XE688 which crashed on 23 October 1957 and was broken up for spares.

Photo by Paul Rainford