i knew his brother at Valley a couple of years later then. Howie was from Ty Croes near Ammanford, and i used to get a lift home with him before i could drive.
they must be related as Howie was quite dark, and mediterranean looking, and i’m sure he mentioned he had a brother in as well.

i used to work on the VAS (or TAHS as it was called then) at Valley and we used to get a meteor in now and again, along with hunters, i can’t remember if they were from Brawdy or Lanbedr though.

the BBC are quoting a figure of ‘over 50 helicopters lost since 2003’…. thats a lot of choppers to lose, and probably more than many airforces have in their total fleet!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6329353.stm

As I’m sure Merlin Pete will atest, the inlet manifolds and induction tube for the Merlin III and XX (i.e early mark) have a completely different stud pattern, you need the manifolds and induction tube from a split head Merlin; the only drawback is that to change manifolds you have to remove at least 1 head or else raise the head and bank up the studs, because the manifold studs are too long to allow the manifold to separate from the head, without hitting its opposite number; a pair of dcoe 40 should provide enough fuel, John Dodds Meteor engined car had a single Holley (4 barrell) at one end , in his case it was the front ( the car that is not the engine!!).

single 40 dcoe webers have trouble supplying enough fuel/air for a well tuned mini, so will not provide nearly enough for a meteor even to idle i’d have thought!
it won’t be the fueling side of things, but the fact that choke size is so small it will strangle the engine and not let enough air in to run anywhere near efficiently. just look at some of the 50’s/60’s/70’s italian exotic cars, they often have a twin choke carb per cylinder.

is the chap in the dust coat Al Leany?

UPDATE.

it has been confirmed that a replacement C-130 has been found.
the aircraft in question is Ex-Evergreen WC-130E, serial N30EV.

the aircraft will be tranfered to SABENA Technics within a month for full scale upgrade and overhaul to the same C-130H standard as the rest of the fleet.

rumor also has it, since serial CH-13 is an unlucky number (supersticious B*llsh*t) the aircraft might be serialed CH-14.

thats an awful lot of work to bring it up to full ‘H’ spec.
they have totally different airconditioning systems (both flight deck and cargo bay), usually an APU instead of a GTC,different fuel plumbing in the wings.
thats a lot of work that won’t be cheap!

a few years ago i was involved in an almost identical project but using a Tristar airliner.
it was used for a while for research and commercially, but i think its now retired.

just do a google of Stargazer or orbital sciences.

there seems to be a common misperception that WD40 is a penetrating fluid.
its not!
if you want a penetrating fluid, use a a product that is designed to do that, like Plus gas, or something similar.

But you’re using common sense! Take an extreme nonsensical example, if a World War One wooden spar was replaced by a metal tube, this would be ‘outside the original specification’. Presumably this is why the US have the successfull ‘Experimental’ category.

its not as simple as just changing the material, it has to act like the existing spar, otherwise the wings may not flex and just snap off!
ok, thats a bit extreme, but if you beef up one bit of structure, the loads are often moved to other parts of the aircraft, so it would have to go through the design stage, weights and stress…..which could end up getting expensive.

this is probably why the Vulcan repair work was a lot cheaper to do now, as they are just incorporating a mod, and not paying for the full design process.