Self-build gliders: a question for the glider pilots

[Mechta]

lotusexige,

This site The Colin Chapman Museum - Frank Costin
gives Frank Costin's employment history as:

• General Aircraft
• Airspeed [Oxford]
• Supermarine
• Percival Aircraft Co.
• Folland Airspeed
• De Havilland
• Costin Drake [General Consultancy]
• Family base consultancy towards the end of his life.

I'm not altogerher surprised that Neville Shute doesn't mention him, when you consider that Frank Costin was 25 at the end of the war, whilst Shute had left Airspeed to work on special weapons for the Royal Navy fairly early on, and the company had been sold to De Havilland in 1940.



The roof trusses you describe sound not unlike those of a Bessonneau hangar. Ours were built in situ, which considering how Mechta Senior, like many in aviation, does not like heights when attached to the ground, must have been an undertaking. The most unusual feature of our house was the woodwool slab roof to the basement, These were wood shavings coated in concrete dust and fused together. Under the garage they were supported on concrete pillars cast in circular oil drums which were then cut away afterwards.