Any music that would make a good background to some fast driving through twistie roads or fast low flying through twistie valleys (I have to imagine that bit) does me. By default this is from the faster and/or heavier end of the spectrum. Having said that, you need some good slow cruising music for being out on the road on a hot summers evening, i.e. the Boys of Summer – Don Henley, I drove all night – Cyndi Lauper, California Dreaming, Sittin on the Dock’o the bay – Otis Redding.

Wasn’t the Gimli glider about getting litres mixed up with gallons when fuelling it ? or was it lbs & KG ?

That must have been a bit startling for people on the race track it landed on at the time. You look in the mirror to see if anyone is trying to pass & a 767 appears !

Wasn’t there a similar incident where a Tristar ran out of fuel because they had left the O-rings out of the fuel pumps during servicing & it leaked out everywhere.

How about the Aloha Airways cabriolet 737 where half the cabin roof disappeared due to the high number of pressurisation cycles it had experienced & the legend that only the extra strength of the seat rails held it together.

Others that come to mind as potential character sources.

Air New Zealand DC10 impacting on Mount Erebus because someone in flight operations changed the flight planning with out telling anyone.

Dan Air 727 CFIT into a mountain on Tenerife because the ATC said “turns to the left” instead of “turn to the left”.

If you want characters to write about there is the Staines Trident where the human factors were as long as your arm. Pilot in bad mood because of an argument in the crew room over strike action before the flight, Junior Co-pilot intimidated by Captain, frosty atmosphere in cockpit, incorrect selection or not of the correct leading edge droop setting.

The Delta 727 that crashed on take off allegedly because the crew up front were fantasising about one of the stewardesses.

The heroic bit of flying where the Ethiopian Airways (I think, anyone ?) 757 got highjacked & ran out of fuel. The pilot ended up fighting with the highjacker who thought he was putting it on. Whilst the scrap was going on in the cockpit they managed a water “landing” of sorts. People still died though.

Kegworth 737 accident where they shut down the wrong engine due to the fact that they had smoke in the cabin.This implied that the engine that failed was the good one. The really tragic bit was that shortly before the impact the captain got the first officer to try to restart the good engine. When asked if this meant that he had realised the mistake, the captain replied that he was just trying to take the first officers mind off the fact that he was probably about to die. Now that’s what being a captain is about. I believe his name was Captain Hunt.

Tony C,

You don’t want a phone that takes pictures.
It’s all an evil consiracy by the women in Mobile Phone company marketing to keep track of their men folk.

“Where are you ?”

“Working late”

“I don’t believe you, you’re down the pub with the lads. I want a photo of your PC with the date & time on it NOW or your dinner’s in the cat”

That’s the way it is going boys…………

ooooohhhh, I’m going to get it from the girls for that. I’m going outside to work on the car & avoid the PC for a bit. Let me know when it’s safe to come back.

Does gaffer taping my basic mobile to my camera count as a mobile capable camera ?

Dear Ren Frew & SOC,

Fear not, I can assure you that Sinsheim is NOT a theme park & is a first class technical museum.

Try http://www.technik-museum.de

They also have Three JU 52s, a canberra, F104, SU-22 (I think), JU 87 wreck, Il-14, JU-88 replica, a mangled Wright Cyclone found in the area & some other aircraft that I can not remember. I shall dig out some pics from a few years back if you want. Best info from their website. The aircraft here tend to be mounted in a novel fashion on stilts at a funny angle. You can access the interiors of some of the larger exhibits including the TU-144. Slide Tubes are provided for exit from some of the aircraft to keep the “kiddies” interested.

There are also lots of other cracking technical exhibits such as the engine out of a destroyer that created about 27,000 shp, awesome. Good classic car & motorcycle exhibition as well.

Thanks for that Ross, though I don’t suppose there is anything rare & salvable down there after all this time in the salt water. Having said that, I saw a cracking photo of a Wellington lying on the bottom of the med whilst surfing the net a while back. All the fabric had gone, but the geodectic airframe was all still intact complete with open cockpit escape hatch. Alas I didn’t save the pic.

Has aybody dived and surveyed any of these dumping grounds just incase ?

The Whitley Project website lists 19 OTU losses at

http://www.griffon.clara.net/19/whitley_losses.htm

if that is any help.

I know this is getting off the subject, but I found this on a diving site a few years ago about diving in Bigbury Bay, Devon.

“Yet another World War Two mystery lies off Burgh Island. Locals call this “The Aircraft Graveyard” because here lie the aluminium bodies and wings of aircraft, including at least two Catalinas. But no one can explain how these aircraft got there – there are no engines to be seen at the 20m site”.

Anyone know anything about it ?