So, here goes……..

Ruskin eventually persuades Jenny, his long suffering wife to come home from York where she took an office job. They buy a modest Semi on the outskirts of garton and jenny soon falls pregnant again.meanwhile ruskin has been busy expanding the operation at Garton and has a servicing facility down at Croydon so he can make use of their Customs dept and stay on the right side of the law. He is still doing the odd dicey runs down to Haifa and The middle east. its dirty work but it pays well, and he needs all the work he can find to fill the hold of His York and Bristol Freighter he now operates alongside two more Daks and a Halton which he snapped up cheaply after the Airlift but which has been plagued with engine and hydraulic faults since the word go. Duncan Mcevoy his Loyal and long serving engineer has a small team working round the clock to keep the fleet in the air whilst Peter Witney has taken on more of the office and administration side of things along with Jenny and also serves as front man and sales rep to the up and coming airline where his public school boy charm attracts work which the often tactless and abrupt Ruskin might otherwise lose to the bigger national carriers. various ad-hoc freight flights are flown and Ruskin still has that chip on his shoulder with the RAF which is further enflared when he repeatedly arranges for one of his pilots to land at a disused airfield in the south to take on Stolen fuel from an RAF bowser, The locals become suspicious and the plane is ambushed by police……….Shall i go on?

And sadly i beleive that ‘Brit’ crashed soon after filming! so that ended that chapter!

Fabulous photos!! to hell with the quality, its the content thats important! can anyone tell me that Dakota in all metal which dak is that? is she still with us? and is the ex India Lib in naturall metal in that photo cos im sure that Lib was painted silver the last time i saw it at Hendon, i Can remember when the Dragonfly fell off the roof at Cosford and smacked down on top of the Lib i bet the dents are still there to show for it!

we dont doubt that there are genuine cases , its the non genuine ones that need weedling out.why dont we spend the money on a department to watch and monitor these people who are apparently unfit to work yet seem perfectly able to play golf, often work in manual roles and who seem almost unable to walk unaided when they make their twice weekly visits to the doctors surgery for their ”free” prescriptions yet on another day can be seen tripping around their local supermarket with the flair and dexterity of an athlete! . Do you know that the higher rate mobility allowance to these people is in excess of £200 per month, or they can opt to give that up for a New car on the scheme, which is then serviced free of charge, taxed,insured, tyres are taken care of too, I ask this, could you purchase a new quality car including tax and insurance and tyres and servicing for £200 per month? something is wrong here!

People on benefit

next time your missus is in the shops and youre really just not interested and fancy a wander, just have a look on the tax discs in peoples cars and see how many are nil ££ (Disabled), you will be amazed!!, then to further your fun and exercise your mind work on the average cost of twelve months tax on an average car, £125ish? then lets say there’s approx five cars per line of parked cars(30) multipled by how many rows in the car park (15) so 5×15=75 x 125=£9375 then think of how many car parks of similar size you have in your town, in my case i reckon on six, so 6 x 9375=£56250 in road fund licence and thats just people shopping in your town! what about those people who are parked at work, (whilst still claiming free road fund licence) those at home and those in the pub! Angry yet? I wont go into the those people who are also in receipt of a car on the motability scheme cos my doctor has told me i should try and avoid stress and worry.

You make a valid point, i work with people in their late twenties and early thirties who dont know what the Berlin Airlift was, Have never heard of Douglas Bader and think the geneva convention is a meeting of Swiss Bank managers! I kid you not!

Just Jane

For my ha’pporth worth, I think that two lancs flying is just excessive. keep ‘Just jane’ doing what she does best, A ground bound taster of what life was like for those aircrews who gallantly went to war in thousands of machines just like her or similar.A tribute to Hampden, Wimpy,Halifax,Stirling, the list goes on….. crew. If anything untoward should prematurely ground PA474 look at it then.Go on keeping Jane active, and update wiring and hydraulics/pneumatics as they need it so that one day she could step into the shoes of PA474. For now perhaps we should be looking at getting the Lancasters younger sister back in the air as a tribute to all those cold war aircrew who endured hour after hour after cramped hour guarding the shores of this country from the soviet threat. Does anyone remember what four Griffons sound like? I do and its something that everyone should have the experience of.anyone agree?

Yeh i reckon its the snowdonia machine i saw, he had pics of a Chinook dragging chunks of it down to a more practical height.Quite some set up, and all quite by chance just being in the right place at the right time.