1. The 'Top Gun' references were puerile meeja nonsense, as was the 'fighter pilot school' meme, 'fast jet driving test' and the like.
2. 'Oxford and Cambridge of fighter pilot training'? Daft comment - meaning only the rich and privileged are likely to make it to Valley.
3. F-35B - I cannot imagine anyone NOT wanting to fly it! OK, so there was some personal Sw loading issue, but watching the stability in the hover and the enthusiasm everyone had - what an amazing jet.
4. Age. What a criminal shame that it's taking such an age for trainees to reach Valley. That means that they're more likely to have family commitments at a time of life when their predecessors were thinking of little except flying, beer, flying, sports cars, flying and chasing girls...
5. 'G'. How does anyone develop routine 'G' tolerance with such little flying and with such gaps in their training progress. I guess we old fossils were lucky in that the JP certainly helped in that respect.
6. Staff / student interaction. Perhaps much of the 'intercom chat' was aimed at the TV audience, as in the '80s series. I was lucky enough to be on the first of the 'new' Chivenor courses and reckon that sharpend and his colleagues had it spot on at the time. We could be pretty informal on the ground, but in the air things were a bit more formal. OK, things might have changed a bit since then, but was what we saw last night typical of today?
7. Valley's infrastructure has improved immeasurably since my day!
8. Interesting to see how 'Danners' planned that low level trip with a modern planning system. Lucky her! No-one can convince me that the faffing with map guillotines, gorilla snot glue and nav rulers of my era was better!
The 617 sequences were vastly better than the Valley sequences, to my mind. Overall it looks like being a good series which is somewhat overdue.