Mega-excuses?
A couple of weeks ago your uncle reported that a Hairbrush sales executive visiting Los Angeles had elected not to arrive via the Super Fatty test bird MSN001 that arrived the day before as "there were no business-class seats".
Nephew Nigel McDonough begs to differ: "The hairbrush sales executive you mention might also be in need of rewiring or retraining. As one of the lucky ones who toured MSN001 at Farnborough I distinctly remember seeing a few rows of business-class seats at the front of the upper deck. The sales executive should start to believe in his product or come up with more imaginative excuses."
(But, says our Hairbrush spokesman Alphonse Aurevior: "There is the small matter of the in-flight service available. You 'ave the option of the lovely Marianne serving in first class on Birdseed Airways or of hairy Jacques, ze senior flight test engineer on 001. Take your pick my friend")
Parallel universes?
Our very own guns and rockets guru, Sqn Ldr Stewart Sidewinder DFC and [down the] bar, was a touch surprised when he recently visited the Royal Air Force's official history website portal (www.raf.mod.uk/history/historyredirect.cfm) and discovered that the history of the RAF is under redevelopment.
It turns out to be quite fascinating, says Stewart. Apparently it says how we won the Second World War on our own, how the Vulcan put every bomb down the centre of the runway at Stanley, describes the glorious service years of the Spey-engined Mirage IVK and the Avro Arrow in service alongside the TSR2. But the best has to be the (aaaaaaaaaaaahhh Hawker) P1121 Hurricane II and P1154 supersonic Harrier projectsnot forgetting the rather unfortunate episode of the TSR2 launching off the Shorts PD17 hovering platform. (That's enough revisionismEd.)
Arms to Iran
A British company has sold the first new Western-made aircraft to Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution - Reuters
(Interesting new derivative of the BN Islander Brian, looks remarkably like ye olde Fairey Firefly)
Read Flight from 1956 or read Uncle Roger's web log.
Source: Flight International
