Not all Englishmen drink lager, only the ones that are stupid enough to believe the adverts.

‘Ere! Damien, ‘ang on a minnit. How come you’re in our country and somehow we’re the foreigners?

AFAIK, with possibly a few exceptions the skin isn’t pre-stressed.

If you take an early Hurricane as an example, the primary internal structure is designed to be strong enough to take all the loads and stresses. In practice the fabric does add a certain amount of strength but I believe it’s fairly minimal.

Compare that with a Spitfire where the internal structure is nowhere near strong enough. The rigidity and strength only comes when the skin is rivetted on. Although the formers, bulkheads and stringers take some of the overall load, they’re as important to keep the skin the right shape.

You cant beat a Mk1 Lotus Ford Cortina – beautiful from every angle.

A mate of mine had one of those around 30 years ago. Unusually, it had a yellow flash instead of a green one, apparently from new.
He found out a few years after he sold it that it was one of 6 works rally cars.
Seriously p*ssed off.

No not a new one! One of the old mean V8s, possibly even a Vantage.

I don’t know if they’ve stopped production there completely. One of my cousins works there, I’ll have to find out.

There’s a bit in the Frank Whittle/John Golley book which says that Whittle was refused entry to the RAF as he was too short. He went away and exercised until he grew a bit.
I’m quite prepared to believe Carey was small, but comparing it with the picture of Daz at 5’6″, Carey is reaching up a fair bit to the cannon. Anybody got a cannon-armed Spit handy to see how high the muzzle is? 🙂

I use http://www.mailwasher.com
Unfortunately the site’s down for re-construction at present so it doesn’t help immediately.

However, it shows what mail’s on the server and gives the option to delete it before it even reaches your PC. I’m sent around 100 emails a day and they’re approx. 80% spam.
Mailwasher makes it a minor inconvenience, not a problem.

There’s a small bulge on the nose just behind the spinner. It looks a little like what I believe is the Coffman starter bulge on a MkII Spitfire. What side should it be?