Today I was getting caught up with some scanning and came across this picture. It pretty much shows Mike with two of his loves – Tango Mike and a Brittannia 76!

I got to know Mike pretty well when he was running Russavia and I was doing the restoration of ‘JHO – we both shared a common interest – that of the life and times of Captain Ernest Edmund ‘Ted’ Fresson OBE, the Scottish aviation pioneer. Through working with Peter Clegg we produced a number of early Scottish aviation books, and, in conjunction with the Royal Aero Club, we produced one of the annual Sir Frederick Tyms Memorial Lectures. This resulted in Mike and myself going up and down to Scotland a number of times to present the lecture at Inverness and around the islands – of course I was VERY much the assistant and taxi driver!

All of these ‘lectures trips’ seemed to start at STN in the wee small hours when I had to meet him up to go to either LHR or LGW. On one memorable occasion we was flying into Sumburgh aboard a BA ATP in what could only be called a blizzard above 500 feet. Mike of course had talked his way onto the flight deck and jump-seat rode it down – Sumburgh Head seemed VERY close as it passed underneath that morning!

A similar thing happened when we went to Inverness aboard a Dan-Air 737 – the moment we got on board Mike turned left instead of right, but at least I got to chat to Senior Hostess Mo Perera!

When we launched our book on Pauline Gower, Mike loaned us his Tiggie to re-create Paulines flour-bombing escapades when she used to ‘attack’ the Searles speedboat at Hunstantion in 1934 using her Spartan. Fun times!

They are certainly to be found in classic British Motorcycle parts catalogues, but are more commonly known as cable adjusters, not cable stops.

Is it the Severn – and not the Humber bridge?

Modern airliners do not use mass balances like this –
😀

I was under the impression that at least some versions of the 74 had tail surfaces fitted with amounts of depleted unanium – or some other such dense material… but I may be wrong!

I absolutly hate Warbirds in civilian schemes……..

Nice post nevertheless..

*grins*… owners can paint their aircraft in whatever colours they like – and if it bring in sponsorship to keep ’em flying – paint them sky blue pink with yellow dots for all I care!

Does he have a website? If so a hyperlink would be useful.

opps….. my apologies!

http://www.aviationbookhouse.co.uk/

If Barton (or however variously written) was taken over by the RAF in WW2, I note that it is not mentioned in the 1990 Omnibus Edition of Willis & Hollis. Was it known by any other name, or did the fact that it was an ATA airfield mean that, strictly speaking, it was not ‘military’?

Almost certainly – I’ve never quite been certain of the W&H criteria for inclusion, but I suspect you are right – however, they don’t include Luton which was ATA, (and had at least one RAF unit there for a while) so that shoots that theory down I suppose!