Yes..yes..it was a typo!!! I meant OH-6 of course.meanwhile G-MASH has just gone up for sale for a cool £85,000!!!!

The Helicopter Museum at Weston super Mare had the same problem quite a few years ago after GKN bought Westland.Around came a bean counter to look at the assets (4.5 acres of airfield with a wooden hut but on a prime roadside site).He valued the land and a year or so later the museum added it to its bid for lottery money.Now it owns the freehold so problem solved.
In Boscombe’s case ,the same might not be feasible so is there a plan B..like moving to Old Sarum airfield ????

If someone contacts [email]helimuseum@btconnect.com[/email] they might be interested in taking on the Whirlwind ??

The assumption that you’d get 33 Pumas for the budget is open to question…I believe it reduced to less than 30 as the Euro grew stronger.Also the work was going to be done by Eurocopter at Oxford…not in Romania so where did that change come from.
I agree with thos e who say…throw the Pumas away…it has a bad crash worthiness history and at least 30 of the 33 have been rebuilt at least once !

I have to add my condolescences to all those who have posted…I worked with Alan Hall and Jerry Scutts in the early days of Aviation News ,in fact up until 1977 when Alan was at Amersham and when Jerry was working on other projects .The loss of Mick Stroud too was a shock as I hadn’t expected it.

Is it just me or has the aviation journalism world changed since those days …Freedom of Information ,the web and digital cameras make it much easier to gather information now that we don’t seem to have the likes of these experienced professionals and their “story ferreting “abilities any more ?