Duxford/FoD has done very nicely out of me over the years. I’ve rarely visited often enough to recoup the membership fee, sometimes only once for Flying Legends and we haven’t even been to that since they introduced advance tickets only.
The 20% discount in the cafes/restaurants brings the price down to merely outrageous but I still only use them for the odd cup of tea or coffee having deliberately fed my face on the way.
I worked on the basis it was for a good cause, and to be fair the FoD enclosure at airshows was a huge benefit.

The special discounted offer for existing members is 30% dearer than when I renewed earlier this year. There’s an outside chance I might renew this year, although probably not, and next year no chance at all.

I never met the lady but saw her interviewed several times in TV programmes and admired her and her colleagues.

She deserved a far better write-up than that forces.net rubbish.

As I remember it, which could easily be wrong, the full quote was “the only Peruvian nuclear scientist born in Watford”.
It’s a fair bet he was right.

I was too, but as I’m neither Peruvian or a nuclear scientist it doesn’t count.

My other is/was a huge fan – of his voice.
She said when she saw him in concert in Nottingham 30+ years ago he had absolutely no stage presence and seemed to have had a total charisma bypass.
Perhaps he didn’t like Nottingham…

I visit Duxford rarely now. If they hadn’t abolished FoD I would probably have continued renewing my membership anyway but not now.

I’ve been to HMS Belfast and the Cabinet War Rooms once each and am unlikely to go back to either, Lambeth three times although admittedly not for many years and I’ve no desire to go to IWM North.

I haven’t got to finally decide until July but I’m pretty sure I won’t be taking out IWM membership.

They are described as portable generators when mentioned in connection with motorcycles which leads me to think they weren’t fitted to aircraft.
On the other hand, if they weren’t, why would they need aluminium barrels as opposed to the standard Triumph cast iron?

It didn’t sound too healthy when I saw it. Clouds of black smoke out of the (four?) exhaust pipes and quite some time before it decided to run on all twelve.

Regarding the court case, I believe following that if anybody needed to buy a Rolls-Royce radiator shell or bumpers, they had to produce the damaged items first to prove they were needed to repair a real Rolls-Royce.