DM, Thanks, I do actually agree with your last. It is not a one pointed 'jab' at AW and there is a wider villain here. From the ground, I can assure you that it is very hard to get any honest empathy from the non mil side, I have tried.
It would seem that AW can just wait until, because we can't any more, there is no option to accept second best . It is defiantly a monopoly with a .gov.uk cheque at the end - it is SO VERY frustrating.
I am wrong to berate the H&S instructions and blame others for doing their mandated, ill advised will. I can assure you I am not the only person who WILL ignore them if it saves life or gets a very important job done (I could also say that I would use them to my advantage if it had the same effect - fickle or what!!) but do get annoyed when they are used as a weapon to NOT give us what we want - eg - tough, you got the seats as against OK, we will adapt it so you have enough seats, can you see the subtle difference?
On the Nr, I can verily easily over speed the head with power applied, if heavy. Heavy being a lot less than the predicted weight of the Mk 11 Lynx, sorry the all new FLynx - not able to comment on the 800s. The 800s being another point, if we didn't accept the Mk11, we were not going to get the 800s, how was that acting in our best interests??