Hi Rich,

Thanks for posting. Welcome to the forum.

”common sense NOT to waste money on that Merlin as part of a project that was limited in scope by the stunted parochial little-englander attitude of too many within the warplane movement. As a Scot I can safely say it was our war too.”

I think you are way out of line. You claim to have disdain for politicisation, yet that is precisely what you have brought to this thread. As a Scot I can safely say your personal prejudices are of minimal interest to anyone here.

I can’t help remembering that Scotland had its own Lancaster for many years, but the museum closed and the aircraft sold off as low visitor numbers made the enterprise untenable.

The Canadian visit was a towering success, and was enjoyed by countless people. Maybe you should have made a bit more effort.

‘, what is the translation of ‘ToC’ some year and a half before final airframe erection?

Is it ‘Taken on charge’ ie accepted ..?

Looking at the current issue, I was reminded again why I find FlyPast so hard to read, and buy.

The layout is just too damn frantic, and the designer has found 50 ways to mess up what would have been perfectly attractive photos, overlaying with text, ghosting other images on top, or behind. The ‘design’ is far too self-conscious. Sometimes (most times) just words and pictures is fine. The only picture unmolested was of Norman Tebbit asleep in his study! Yet a nice air-to air of a Mustang is cropped to death.

I suspect that all the components (ghastly fonts, dodgy artwork. free floating boxes of text, over-cropped photos ) are rammed into a blunderbuss, and fired at the blank page. There is no other explaination.

Somehow, it does not feel like a journal for grown-ups.

Someone’s got to post a picture.. Certainly looks good.

And that just sucks.

The enthusiast-orientated magazine sector might well have some sort of a future, but it may be rather a short one.

The traditional magazine-buying generation is dying off, and there is no sign that younger consumers are going to acquire the habit. There is no scenario that I can envisage which does not encompass an inexorable decline.

2 Lancasters – Derwent Valley: http://youtu.be/BlJ4htNDoHI

Great video. On board Go-Pros on each a/c . This is the sort of ‘reporting’ that make the monthly mags seem so 20th century.