Since Raytheon sold it off it’s become Hawker Beechcraft (late last year I think). I have heard rumours that there is now little commonality between the 125 and the 800/1000 airframes, though looking at them I don’t believe it. Still looks the same to me except thet as far as I can recall the 1000 has an extra windoe each side.

The Hawker 800XP airframes are the same as built by BAe since 1983. There are few detailed changes (uprated engines, avionics etc.) The 1000 has the PW305 engine as opposed to the TFE731 and is slightly longer. It has the same wing as the 800XP (slightly different to the BAe built 125-800). Not a great success the 1000, only 52 built. I don’t know about the Hawker 750XP or 900XP if they are still being built at Chester. Incidentally the 125-1000 was originally the 125-900 (they have 259xxx) cns.

The Comet was the world’s first Jet airliner and it is far mor likely that the B-47 and B-52 ideas came from the 707 rather than the other way around.

Indeed the Comet was the first jet airliner but the B-47 first flew in 1947, the B-52 in 1952 and the Dash80 prototype not until 1954 so many of ideas and concepts must have been designed into the bombers first.

Now, I had always thought the twin 146 was a twin engined high wing, but when I was shown some of the original scheme work at Woodford the last proposal was actually a rear twin engined, low wing, and very nice it looked too.

The 146 NRA was twin engined high-wing, as was the original RJX. The rear engine concept was looked at as was the twin under-wing engine design. I have artist impressions somewhere. Looked a lot like the EMB190. I’m not sure we ever got close to metal cutting. I was involved with design studies but I don’t know how far the project actually got as it never officially launched.

AP