Yes, Patty owns a Vincent and a few other two wheeled machines.

I could learn to hate that man.

Silly season for Putnam prices on Ebay at the moment.

Did get a silly cheap one a month or two ago – Brirtish Bomber since 1914 for £2.99

We’re planning to be there, not sure what time yet.

Not expert, but at least some books are to hand. 🙂

The Dolphin only appears to have flown twice. First flight September ’36, scrapped in December. It was structurally overweight and DH were too busy with the Albatross and mass-production of the Tiger Moth to spare the design staff to sort it out.
No original drawings have/had come to light but there’s a GA drawing in the Putnam DH book.

The Don, not in my opinion one of the more attractive DH designs, was originally designed as a multipurpose trainer with turret et al. “Officially-inspired improvements”, made it overweight so the turrets and other training aids were removed and they were delivered as communications aircraft. 30 built plus another 20 without engines.
A few pictures in the Putnam book but, a) copyright and b) I’m not going to open my book out flat to get it on the scanner.

I don’t suppose there was much need for Rover to change anything. The factory was handed over to them as a going concern, already in full production AFAIK. Their’s would be more of a management role than anything else.

As Mark12 said, it does seem difficult to believe Packard would use BA, BSF and BSW threads. In similar vein, the DH Gipsy range of engines used metric threads and they were re-drawn for Australian production.

Greatest piston engine ever? Possibly military but I believe it took a lot of work to get it reliable enough for civil use.

When did Packard start manufacturing Merlins? Was it as a result of US aircraft requirements or were they used initially to suppliment UK demands?

Without looking it up I can’t say when but it was originally to supplement UK requirements, after Ford (U.S) had turned us down.

Cue the ‘personal planner’ feature 🙂

I missed it by being asleep, still in the chair. If the personal planner can do a sharp poke in the ribs, I should have set it. 🙂