View from the other side of the counter in the line hut.
Hey Less of the "erks"
I have been a CIVI erk since 1968 with 10 years at 30 MU Three years at RASF Tabuk and the rest of my time in atmospheric research with Met Office MRF (Snoopy) at Farnborough. working at Post doc level on instrument development.
Now that is challenging work and you have to be pretty bright to qualify.
Well I have to admit the lightning is as much a challenge as leading science research.
I am currently OC elect / Avionics XS422 Anglo American Lightning Organisation.
Gatwick Aviation Museum electronics / avionics
XS422 Cranfield T bird Electrical / Avionics consultant.
So fully up to speed with this awsome bit of kit.
In Saudi, at the end of the contract, they returned 35 ish airframes with 2000Hrs ish on them and to my mind there was only one case of a lightning reverting to agriculture due to a thehnical failure.
So thats 70K Hrs with one failure. OK 35,000 hrs MTBF thats not bad not bad at all.
If any one out ther has more info on the RSAF case would love to here from you.
A Lightning T Bird flying SAFELY in the US now that is worth rooting for.
The Tech sorry "grunts" team has more Lightning experience than enough to operate it safely.
Was only talking to an Ex CAA bod the other day and suprise suprise,, acording to this bod, the only reason Lightnings were banned in the UK was not on engineering grounds but they felt they could not trust the drivers to be sensible!!!!
Now that suprised me quite a lot.
Won't go into the S.A. issue but it won't happen in the USA.
Any ex lightning engineers sparkies you are still needed providing you can cut it.
There are arm chairs but only in the crew room.
RB