For those of us with terrestrial or digi television, we have been treated to repeats of all the various Star Trek off shoots, but not the original series. Once apon a time it was often repeated on BBC2, but not anymore, I haven’t seen any of them for a while. I’m assuming that the nice Mr Murdoch has realised the potential with the new film and secured the exclusive rights for Sky. That raises the question as to whether it includes the films with the original cast, or the spin offs, such as ‘Generations’ or the Next Generation episode that cleverly manipulated one of the old programmes.
Did William Shatner originally secure the rights to any episodes or films that featured himself and got a large monetary deal out of Sky to give them exclusivity, does anyone know.

Enjoying the sun today next to Maldon ( Essex ) boating lake while the kids were crabbing, and watching the Lancaster fly past on it’s way to Southend Airshow and noting that the parading hordes took no notice of it whatsoever, apart from one old dear sitting near me.
I said to her, ‘Do you know what that is’
She said very severly, ‘Of course I do, it’s a Lancaster, but there’s no point in me shouting to my grandchildren because they wouldn’t have a clue what I’m talking about, besides, the crabs are far more important’.
Point taken, then we fell about laughing.

Of course, even if not restored to full airworthiness, when doing a fast taxi-run, four RR engines at full chat, lightly-loaded, and a sudden cross-wind, who knows what could happen….:D[/QUOTE]

During my trip to East Kirby and Conningsby a few weeks ago, there was a very strong crosswind, subsequently Just Jane was treated very carefully and simply did a gentle tour of the airfield:-

I have to say that I had’t seen the aircraft since it was sitting moribund outside Scampton, next to the ‘live’ Tallboy, to witness it taxying at close quarters was fantastic, especially on that atmospheric airfield.
My own feelings are to leave things as they are, however, should the Pantons decide to fly her, they have my full support, who can blame them for wanting to take that further step forward, if they can afford it. At least being farmers they will have taken every financial issue into consideration, they may be getting on a bit, but I doubt whether they are easily fooled.

Incidentally, ‘The Phantom’ was due for it’s first test flight from Conningsby that day, I was standing on the tow bar, when I took this:-

Unfortunately the wind was considered too strong, but while I was up the Eastern end of the runway photographing landing Typhoons, she had been towed out and flew shortly after I left at about 18:00, Cest la Vie.

To sum up, two airworthy Lancs within a few miles of each other, in that particularly historic area of Lincolnshire would be quite a unique thing to achieve, I bet that Petwood would benefit, perhaps they should make a contribution.

Don’t you mean dunny, Steve.

How many of the Original crew are still alive today???

I think that the only deceased key characters are ‘Bones’ and ‘Scotty’, and of course, Gene Roddenberry, not sure about some of the aliens though after Kirk got carried away with his photon torpedoes, what exactly were those things, were they used on the General Belgrano.
Lets not forget that Kirk got killed trying to save Jean-Luc from the clutches of Alex and his Droogs in a bit of ‘Ultra Violence’.

With reference to the DX thread, it wasn’t just us that noticed the smoke trail then, honestly, the smell of burning oil when she taxied past was very strong, if you all think that this is normal with a ‘new’ engine then, fine, we were just a bit worried at the time.
Was there always a problem with port outers on B-17’s, we were looking at the increasingly very faded B-17 in the AAM on sunday and noticed that of all of it’s engines, the port outer had more oil stains along the nacalle than the others, or was this the engine that was swapped following the incident in the making of ‘Memphis Belle’.

A very enjoyable day despite the weather, We were also lucky enough to be with someone who’d never been to Duxford before, it’s always good to see someone discovering new things.
We were all surprised to see the Vimy replica in the restoration hangar, how did it get there, I may have missed the story on here.
More questions, where is the Gnat team based and why did the VC-10 come from and return to Mildenhall.
Bravest pilots of the day were the two that brought the B2 and Moth from Old Warden, they appeared to have an escort with them that flew circuits away from the airfield, I quite understand why many of the aircraft didn’t attempt to take off from DX, but those two were willing to give it a go in two very unique aircraft.

Just one worrying note, Sally B was trailing smoke from the troublesome port outer, everyone around us noticed it. On landing and taxying right past us, the smell of burning oil was quite overpowering. Presumably it was’nt giving the crew any concerns as she went off to display elsewhere, does anyone know anything, is it just teething problems.