The Bristol went down on the 10th of May 1975. The Captain was Les Barnes, ex-ANSW, who came out of early retirement to go flying again.
After the accident they changed to a two pilot operation with both pilots holding an endorsement. I was in the group of new Co-Pilots and did my endorsement with Len Veger at Mangalore. I will always remember the line of cars parked on the highway watching this bellowing beast bounce around the circuit. It did indeed fly like a big Auster but with 56 inches of manifold pressure at 2800 rpm on take-off. No mixture controls, they had carby shut-off levers and automatic leaning. Auto-coarse, electrical tail-wheel lock, I could go on. Pommy madness in engineering at its very best. I enjoyed it, but it was kind of scary at times, especially at high weights during the winter nights. 'SJG' only had a LLZ with no G/s which made life difficult. We called the other one, 'ADL' "Adolf" which seemed very apt. It now lives behind a fence at the Moorabbin Air Museum were it can do no further harm.