Great pics everyone; what a wonderful aircraft the 61 is. Many of the names you all mention were familiar to me although I'd moved across the road by then. The Craighaar and the Sumburgh Club seemed to blur the company differences between us all.
AB206 G-AWMK - Cliff Saffron and I accepted her from Cascina and delivered her to Redhill on 22 August 1968. I had 3 hours on type (with Fred le Grys) and didn't have a clue what was going on; luckily Cliff knew everything!
Somewhere I've got a rather yellow picture of what I did to 9Y-TCZ in Trinidad in 1969 (just before Carnival). Broke her back as well as my own, though I recovered and am still involved in aviation.
I flew the WX 60 offshore briefly with Dick Metcalf - what became of him?
Also the WS 55 Series 3 on floats including water landings into a Norfolk ditch with John Cameron.
Later in BAH I did water landings and rejects into the bay opposite the Sumburgh Hotel in G-BDKI. Presumably the engineers put a stop to this particular form of fun years ago.
Heliaviator nice pic of Ron, God rest him. The green cockpit is a Mil 26 if I remember right (I operated beside them in Zagreb); seems to be in tropical rig with fans. The Zagreb ones (and the small Antonovs) used to go back to Russia for major maintenance, stuffed with radios, tvs etc; when they came back they were stuffed with Georgian champagne, vodka, caviar etc. Our Russian colleagues are very resourceful indeed; luckily they were always generous enough to throw a party. I don't drink vodka anymore but have an Aeroflot tie and wings in compensation.
Compared to our fixed wing contemporaries in the airlines we've had interesting lives; wouldn't change one iota of it.
Best wishes all from Rupert Wilson.