Having recently read the book "The Phoenix squadron" featuring 809 Sqdn, I couldn't miss a chance here to include pictures of Ark Royal, as we shared the hangar with 809 for their last couple of years. We also inherited their aircraft. One thing that comes to mind straight away is that everyone there had a beard, i never even wanted one but there they were sporting huge amounts of hair, even if they didn't have any on top.
They could tuck all their aircraft in half a hangar which is as story in itself. If you can imagine getting something 55ft long (airbrakes extended, nose closed), 42 foot wide (wings extended) and 16 foot high (tyres inflated)(only joking) into a hangar space, then parking 20 more in the same hangar you can imagine how crowded it was, it certainly didn't pay to absent mindedly extend the wings.
as you can see in this shot below the width of the aircraft was hugely different once the wings were extending and as there was only a metre or two between aircraft so the wings would end up nicely resting on the next one over.
Another part about the parking was that it was a good idea to do the jobs you wanted to do on the folded part of the wings before you parked it in the hangar because it was an interesting job later to try to do them on a ladder with only a few metres of space.
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