slightly off topic but my lynx flight commander from many years ago was a LT simon brand,wonder if its the same one? if so then you may just get the party line.

at least you get an extra mk3 nose with the lynx,they did leave the donor program with most of the panels in boxes stowed in cabin,probably have to pay extra(!) for them.

last year at ********* air day those who were not working and not on base by 06:00 had to pay to get onto their own base, that really peed a lot of people off, balance that against some mates of mine who went over to california for desert hot/high training they got really cheap tickets into all places and the best seats in the venue!

‘ghouls’ was the word he used not mine, i think they had a lot of requests to look around the RNFSAIC hanger but only allowed flight safety courses to go inside and even then we were escorted all the time,very interesting but desperately sad.

not long after the accident i was on a flight safety course at the RNFSAIC and was shown the wreck, the investigator showing us round the hanger said it was policy to scrap airframes that were involved in fatals as there were many ‘ghouls’ who wanted a part so it would be rendered unidentifiable before sale for scrap, sad to see there was a teddy bear still on the wreck placed by a wellwisher that the team didnt have the heart to move.

SHIP BUSTERS,an older book that after all i’ve read still makes me shiver with admiration for the losses they took in beauforts/blenhiems and still carried on. TORPEDO LEADER by w/cdr patrick gibbs for the same reason, second CARRIER PILOT as it was one of the first books i read that made me realise just how terrible the attrition of deck operations was. ( which maybe why i joined the FAA and now understand the sheer difficulty of deck ops).