How many people are actually current on autogyros at the mo? I know Ken Wallis is – I can see him flying them till he drops, but I’m not sure I’ve heard of anyone else who flies them.

Hairyplane, I think you are barking! However sometimes it needs someone like that to get something done – Good luck and here’s hoping for autogyro madness! 😀

Adrian

Not sure that it’s really historic, but it was a while ago so…

I went to a boarding school (for nutcases, which explains some of my postings) in Kent which was in an old manor house on a high ridge running west-east through the county.

Several of us were out on the school playing fields after tea on one of those beautiful early summer evenings, when an A-10 roared over from the south, flew low over over the school and peeled away to the east, disappearing over the ridge towards Leeds Castle. Well, we enjoyed that. Then, a few seconds later, another one did exactly the same – and that is when we realised that they were using the school building as a target, making strafing runs against it!

I cannot now recall how many planes we thought there must be – certainly more than one – but I do recall that they carried on making these runs for a good twenty minutes, on and off. Some evening for a plane-mad (plain mad?) adolescent!

Oh, and of course watching Essex score 503-4 against Australia at Chelmsford on September 3rd last year when Sally B roared over low on her way to somewhere. Fantastic – and when she returned a few hours later a section of the crowd broke into the Dambusters March. OK, wrong plane, but nice thought!

Adrian

and a sub at Chatham Historic Dockyard,

HMS Ocelot – worth the price of admission alone, must have taken a special breed of men to serve in something that size for so long…

(you can get back to the topic now, chaps!)

Adrian

No doubt explaining why high-speed aircraft land on wheels…
😀

Adrian

Probably a pointless observation but, recalling the crash into the sewage farm, as a tiddler I remember an interview in the Saffron Walden or Braintree paper (about 1982, I reckon) of an old gent who claimed that as a young man he had been at Brooklands and had actually rescued a pilot who had crashed into a slurry lagoon…

Adrian

No help at all to poor old Steve, but at least one fell in the Sampfords or Hempstead (NW Essex) – my grandfather went belting off after it on his bike apparently!
I’m presuming that by the time he arrived the V1 had hit the deck and gone “pop”, ‘cos I don’t think he could cycle that fast!

Adrian

. I would also suggest “The Big Show” by Pierre Closterman (an old book but recently re-published).

As “TBS” has already gone, may I suggest “The Last Enemy” by Richard Hillary?

Adrian