I remeber meeting Wally in a hotel near Leiscter around 78 or so when he was flying a G5 or G5a for Bristows on the pipeline contract, he had landed and overnighted in the garden of a newly converted old house that was just starting business as a hotel, in the morning the machine refused to start in the cold weather and the battery went flat, so I and another engineer were dispatched from Redhill to get him going again, the machine was parked neatly in the middle of what can only be discribed as an immaculatley flat croquet lawn.
After a drawn out process of changing plugs, Battery and several attempts to start failed I resorted to the old trick of soaking a load of rags in a bucket of hot water and draping them around the induction tubes, much to Wallys amazement the old bird farted!! and away she went.
The rest of the evening was spent in the local pub listening to Wally stories, I was too young and didn't have many to tell then!, myself and the other engineer spent a strange night sharing the Honeymoon suite! (the only room finished apart from the one Wally ocuppied), in the morning we awoke to find Wally had started, taken off and disappeared, leaving the once immaculate croquet lawn with a horse shoe pattern of mud made by engineers feet right in the middle, so we quickly paid the bill and legged it!.
Best Regards
Stacey