Ah, but Dan this type of diesel fuel was mainly ether and castor oil, with a little amyl nitrate. Oh - and some kerosene....
Yes, I always considered that, when it came to cars, diesel was not an officer's fuel. OK for tractors and farm machinery, but not for cars.
Until, that is, the advent of things like the latest Audi Tdi. The joys of living in the Stalinist state of Brave New Britain means that my 23 mpg is a bit expensive these days. But the Audi A5 3.0Tdi quattro achieves over 35 mpg and is a very nice car...
....and personally I would say that it is 'powered by jet fuel' rather than use the d-word!
Back to the hours thing, the US also records PIC in a different manner compared with the UK. As I understand it, a pilot flying with an instructor for currency logs time as PIC, whereas under JAR-FCL that would not be accepted.
Your snooze pilot hours do sound rather spurious - perhaps as irrelevant as the time I maintained night currency by hopping into the seat for 30 min and twiddling the heading bug twice on the way back from Goose....