After many years in the car industry, I can safely say that the amount of effort put into keeping weight down (and monitoring the design activities) is immense. And the cars still gain weight in mysterious ways despite all that… (in one case at a previous employer, 200kg appeared between prototype and production).

Weigh everything (even glue, nuts, bolts and washers), and if possible weigh each sub assembly as you go. Set up an excel spreadsheet to give running totals – ball ache to be sure but not as much as trying to figure out where to save 5 – 10kg at the finish of the build!

John C

Well, I’ve sold my bike 🙁

Guess it’s time to book a medical, have a chat with the flying schools and get a few lessons under my belt 🙂 Having done a bit of a web grep of the local schools I like the look of Midland Air Training (them wot I did my 1 hour flight with) – the rest seem to be a bit wooly on regarding landing fees, ground school etc, although the hourly rates are lower. There are 4 schools within 3 miles of my front door so it’s not like I’m short of choice. The URL’s are below if anyone is interested:

http://www.almatflyingclub.co.uk/

http://www.mats.uki.net/services.htm

http://www.covaero.com/

http://www.flyaft.com/

http://www.wellaviate.co.uk/

If anyone can be bothered, give me some pros and cons of the above schools (PM if anyone is worried about upsetting people, although a sensible organisation would appreciate the chance to improve)

But don’t tell ‘er indoors.

John C
engaging grovel mode

Surprised that no one has mentioned Bruntingthorpe (or have I missed it), although to aviation peeps I guess it’s still an airfield – I’ve done a track day there and a wheelie training day (now that was fun :D).

John C

John C, you do not have the Typhoon print in 1024×768?

No, but try this link… 😉

http://www.ivanberryman.com/sold_out_editions.htm

John C

I know MIRA very well – many a windy, cold and wet day stood outside in the middle of nowhere doing drive by noise testing 🙁 Doing that work at Gaydon now (which is now a Jaguar Land Rover site BTW, but the Heritage centre has a small museum giving the aviation history of the site).
Did that at Lotus as well (and no it’s not in the least glamorous working in the car industry!). There used to be a small 389th museum in the control tower at Hethel – no idea if it’s survived the upheavals of recent years.

So Millbrook wasn’t ever an airfield then?

John C

What about Ivan Berryman? Jolly nice chap – met him after winning a very nice Mossie print in a Flypast competition many years ago (1992 if I recall correctly).

I’m scanner-less at present so no pics from me…

I work in Whitley on what was the Armstrong Whitworth site. I know Siskins were built here, but were Whitleys also made on this site?

John C