Not when I went to school, it wasn’t!

Oh, and – happy birthday, Propstrike 😎

Barry, a.k.a. ‘Billy Black’ is what you’d call a bit of a character. I remember he had a dancing pig as part of a stage show that he named Don Rash after the then-Leader of the Opposition!

The railway carriages have been there for years, but I don’t think I remember the Bristol (it’s been more than 10 years). A bit further south there was the DC3 which had been turned into a cafe, too. I always wanted to stop there as a kid, but we never did. Maybe next time I’m home?

http://www.mangaweka.co.nz/dc3-aeroplane.html

So, in a former life, I guess my wife was a cat.:highly_amused:

I suspect that trying to confirm this with a saucer of milk and a piece of string would be highly inadvisable!

Back on avian topics – I’m very pleased to hear that these chaps are gradually returning to city areas back home.

Something I miss – along with walking through the bush with a couple of these chaps acting as ‘wingmen’.

And finally – one of the conservation projects my parents are working on involves reintroducing these chaps to pest-free habitats.

the conclusion was that cats are not the main or even a major reason for the decline in small bird populations

Certainly downunder, one of the main predators of forest birds is actually rats. Another huge problem in NZ is possums, which not only kill the trees but also destroy nests and kill and eat chicks and eggs. There is a pretty extensive programme of laying/dropping 1080 (sodium fluoroacetate) because it is the most efficient way of controlling them in inaccessible areas. The situation is more complicated in Aus because there’s more mammals about – hence Jim’s friend’s resistance.

There always seems to be a lot of angst when Tiddles comes in with something twitching these days. They’re cats. It’s what they do. Much like meat comes from supermarkets, people have forgotten that cats are apex predators and that was the whole point of domesticating them in the first place. If anything, while your average domestic mog* will catch something now and then I suspect that most of them don’t really try too hard – like Paul’s cat. The thing is, people tend to remember when they do, and c. 10m cats in the UK means a lot of corpses.

*There are, of course, the exceptions – of which our little cat was one. He was 4 months old when we got him but he’d clearly had a pretty tough start to life. We couldn’t have wished for a more gentle, well-behaved, and affectionate pet – but I have never seen a cat quite so utterly attuned to hunting as him. Everything was about hunting. The first time we let him outside, he spent 20 minutes trying to ‘catch’ the grass. Why? Because when he stepped on it, it moved! His crowning achievement was a fully-grown pigeon which was nearly bigger than he was.
I miss my little friend.

£3.36?! for 338 pages?! A steal!

My experience is pretty much limited to 263 Sqn, but the appendices were mostly combat reports or summaries of operations in a variety of formats. Most were typed or carbon copies of telex messages, but some were hand-written or contained diagrams of targets and lines of attack. Length varies from a couple of lines through to 3-4 pages.

There were also some sundries; movement orders, nominal rolls of pilots, occasionally write-ups of training or ‘unusual’ duties.

HTH,

Jeff

I’ve always wondered why he didn’t try for a belly landing, considering the perceived value of the brand-new, ‘top-secret’ fighter. Easy to say and difficult to do, no doubt, but presumably they decided not to risk it with the high approach and landing speed?

Matt – are the stud bolt spacings the same on the Hurricane and Whirlwind hubs?

Some very handsome little chaps, indeed! Mine used to actually grab the flaps of his box and haul it around the living room for prime positioning. Second-best toy ever (after these things )

Ah, of course. Thanks, AA.