Thank you so much, Danny, for that clarification - I was labouring under the mistaken impression that the Vengeance's dive brakes could be operated delicately at less than full whack.
Smudge - thanks, I concur of course completely on the splendid 'controllability' delivered by the hefty brakes on latter-day gliders - and indeed those of the venerable but all-too-rare K18, that's one I'd really have loved to fly. No news back from the press re. Flt Lt Lamprey?
(Has the time come for us to try and muster a Press Gang? ... I sense that he might find it amusing to be Shanghaied!).
Danny's fortuitous use of the expression "reverse throttles" enables me to slip swiftly back to the current subject ... I retain a vivid memory (from long ago, as a passenger a few minutes after departure from Heathrow) of the shaken voice of a KLM Captain announcing "I hope that you were not upset by the unusual noise - I had to use the reverse thrust to comply with a very, ah, urgent request from Air Traffic Control".
I have, ever since, been very mindful of that huge weight which rests on the shoulders of the controller.
Last edited by dogle; 16th Oct 2013 at 14:41.