PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Shorts Belfast for sale
View Single Post
Old 31st Dec 2010, 18:06
  #42 (permalink)  
JW411
 
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: UK
Age: 83
Posts: 3,788
Likes: 0
Received 2 Likes on 2 Posts
ferrydude:

Let us just get one thing absolutely straight here.

I would not touch the Cairns Belfast with a forty-foot barge pole.

Sentimentality is one thing but I can guarantee you that anyone who gets involved is going to get their fingers burnt.

Apart from anything else, the Cairns Belfast was the most eccentric one of the fleet. She used to be XR365 and carried the name "Hector". You could get into "Hector" with five or six deferred defects in the tech log and by the time you got the other end, four of the defects had disappeared but another six new ones had appeared! If any of you out there can remember the wonderful BBC children's programme "The Magic Roundabout" then you will understand why the old girl was called "Silly Old Hector". It was certainly not a good idea to go flying unless she had a really good wet black nose.

By the way, I flew the very first civil-registered Belfast (if we are to forget that Short Brothers put the temporary registration of G-ASKE on the prototype XR362 for a photoshoot).

Which one? G-BEPS (XR368) at Manston on 14 February 1978.

Now I used to work for WR Christopher Foyle. After a huge amount of effort lasting about 8 years and long before the Berlin Wall came down, he managed to set up the Antonov Design Bureau operation. If I wanted to move anything nowadays then I would be looking for an Antonov 22, an Antonov 124 or, if it was particularly big and indivisible, the Antonov 225.
JW411 is offline