Ah yes, the old DC-8 analogy. I'm not sure which aspect of DC-8 operation was used for comparison, but as you and I will recall from our university days, Haraka, the noise made by Heathrow-bound DC-8s, B-707s, VC10s and particularly Tridents even as far out as over Brompton Road was greater than the background traffic noise - but not so today!
The proof that noise was being dealt with satisfactorily came from the Battersea Heliport flights; zero complaints and only 2 calls from curious members of the public who wondered what was going on.
Derek Wood's
Project Cancelled contains a number of significant errors about the Rotodyne; James Hamilton-Patterson's
Empire of the Clouds also perpetuates the myth that Rotodyne was cancelled at the same time as TSR2, P1154 and AW681 rather than 3 years earlier......
Still, when the genpub are content to be deafened by the racket inside a London Underground train
, yet whinge about the slightest noise made by an aircraft overflying the city, scientific noise measurement and silencer technology will always be defeated by rumours and false speculation....
It reminds me of the Concorde boom trials over the Irish Sea and off the coast of Cornwall. Some grumblers had decided that their local church would be damaged by the distant sonic booms. So the church was duly instrumented and observations made. As Concorde's distant boom was heard, the needles indeed twitched. "See, told you so!", claimed one of the agitators. Then someone slammed the church door....and the needles went to full scale deflexion....
