As promised,[ATTACH=CONFIG]253969[/ATTACH]

This afternoon at 1610 whilst delivering to Heliwork on Thruxton airfield a Western Air Piper PA-28-161 Warrior II G-CEJD taxied in only 50 metres away. I also saw a Bulldog parked up with the light blue fuselage band and it’s rudder painted red, white and blue and a few metres away was a gloss black Gazelle.

A pair of yellow prop planes doing aerobatics together for about 15 minutes over Reading this afternoon. Does anybody know anything more about them?

What is the smallest size air launched missile that could sink a Type 45 D Class destroyer?

A few points from Wiki (sorry):

The Lightning’s optimum climb profile required the use of afterburners during takeoff. Immediately after takeoff, the nose would be lowered for rapid acceleration to 430 knots (800 km/h) IAS before initiating a climb, stabilising at 450 knots (830 km/h). This would yield a constant climb rate of approximately 20,000 ft/min (100 m/s).[45][nb 3] Around 13,000 ft (4,000 m) the Lightning would reach Mach 0.87 (1,009 km/h) and maintain this speed until reaching the tropopause, 36,000 ft (11,000 m) on a standard day.[nb 4] If climbing further, pilots would accelerate to supersonic speed at the tropopause before resuming the climb.

The official ceiling of the Lightning was kept secret; low security RAF documents would often state in excess of 60,000 ft (18,000 m). In September 1962, Fighter Command organised interception trials on Lockheed U-2As at heights of around 60,000–65,000 ft (18,000–20,000 m), which were temporarily based at RAF Upper Heyford to monitor Soviet nuclear tests.

In 1984, during a NATO exercise, Flt Lt Mike Hale intercepted a U-2 at a height which they had previously considered safe (thought to be 66,000 feet (20,000 m)). Records show that Hale also climbed to 88,000 ft (27,000 m) in his Lightning F.3 XR749. This was not sustained level flight but a ballistic climb, in which the pilot takes the aircraft to top speed and then puts the aircraft into a climb, exchanging speed for altitude.

At about lunch time today I saw a helicopter flying over Reading that I’m sure was a Russian Mil 8/17, can anybody confirm or deny?

I wonder, what would be the size of the smallest plane that could carry a GAU-8? The USAF has hundreds of retired A-10, that’s a lot of GAU-8s that could be mounted on a smaller plane.

The plane would have to be build around the gun. I don’t think 1100 rounds is needed anymore, around half as much would be enough.

Could something the size of a scorpion be designed to carry it?

The problem with this is the incredible amount of recoil produced by the gun! Anything smaller than an A-10 would drop out of the sky if the cannon was fired for more than one second.