I followed the link from Mike J.

Please, I really, really, really want to know about the Sea Fury N13HP in Texas. A turbojet Fury boggles the mind so much it hurts.

It is, I hate to admit, a full half-century since I was reduced as a toddler to a bawling, shrieking wreck by a Sea Fury. I can feel it all coming on again – I think I’m going to have to lie down in a darkened room.

William

Ben,

I can’t help with formatting the cards, although I suspect that somewhere buried in the depths of the camera manual should be directions for doing this.
As far as a card reader is concerned, if you’ve got a PC running on Windows XP then you shouldn’t need a driver. If all is hunky dory then the appropriate wizard should kick in the moment you connect the card reader. Failing that you should just be able to drag and drop the images into whatever folder you want. If you’ve got a full set of cables with the camera you can work straight from the camera without a reader anyway, although I must admit I use a reader just to save the camera’s batteries.
I’m pretty sure it’s the same for Windows ME, but you may need a driver if you’re on Windows 98. Macs don’t launch a wizard – or at least the last one I used to download pictures didn’t – but the drag and drop principle still applies.
Hope this helps,

William

I reckon Blair – or indeed the government as a whole – is going to be damned if they do, damned if they don’t on this one.
Just about every country I can think of has official government planes at the disposal of the head of state and/or prime minister.
If we accept that the 32 Sqn BAe 146s are getting a little long in the tooth, and if we further accept that yes, they will be replaced, then the story unfolds of its own momentum and the tabloid headlines will follow as surely as night follows day.
On the other hand, if we keep the 146s for the time being, then “Blair makes Queen fly clapped-out jets” is probably inevitable, particularly if combined with some top-spin about cabin air pollution on 146s.
Otherwise charter on the civilian market. In this cost-conscious day and age where taxpayers must be seen to be getting best value for money, that in itself could open a new can of worms. Are we ready to see government VIPs or royalty on foreign flagged aircraft, or UK operators more usually associated with bucket and spade flights to the Med, or lager-swilling weekends in Prague?
I’m not offering an opinion as to whether or not we should have our own A319CJ/A340/whatever, T Blair for the use of. Just suggesting that all hell will break loose from somewhere or other whatever decision is taken.

William

What ever happened to the idea being kicked around three or four years ago to build a taxiable replica of a Whirlwind? It always seemed to me that if you’re going to go so far down the line, one might as well do the sums and the engineering properly and fly the beast.
Do any Peregrines survive? (I doubt it) Or could a Kestrel be ‘Peregrinised’? (ditto).
If the fairy godmother could wave her wand and recreate a British fighter of that era previously supposed to be extinct, I’d go for a Hornet or the Martin-Baker MB5. Dream on….

William

Why upgrade if they still work is my question?

Fair point. The spanners I bought in April were in fact for an ex-RAF Vulcan chum (no…hang on, he wasn’t in Star Trek. Oh look, you all know what I mean) who’s got his own small engineering business.
My own spanners in this size came frem my late father, and some of them go back to the days when he served his time as a motor mechanic with Blakes (Liverpool car dealer) back in the 1920s!
As long as the jaws haven’t opened out they should be OK (and I’ve got a few like that)….but a nice clean well-finished spanner can be a joy to work with. I know where Chris is coming from.
Sad, aren’t we?

William

I can see the point in using BA for the smaller thread sizes, and the risk of trying to force a nut onto the wrong thread would be minimal as a result.
I used to have a stash of aerospace grade BA fasteners in the garage that would have lasted me the rest of my life, and probably that of the children. They dated back to the time when everything was going metric in the early 70s, and apart from the desire to standardise on metric specifications generally there was the particular risk of the 0BA/M6 mismatch – hence great handfuls of them could be carted away from Filton with impunity. 2BA, incidentally, is quite close to 3/16 UNF, but you’d have to be a cack-handed mechanic beyond all reason to force one on t’other.
Alas, we had a break-in a few years back and the chest full of BA and cycle thread fasteners went.

William

Hi Zack and welcome

A Fuji A345 is a four megapixel autofocus camera, which means the results should be well up to the technical standard of the rest of the stuff posted on this forum. You’ll find that you have to reduce the file size in order to post the pictures, which means that as far as reproducing them on the web is concerned you’re no worse off than someone who’s spent thousands on fully professional kit.
Best of luck – let’s see what you come up with.

William