Savoia - great picture of G-BVNH with Mark Harrisson (always two S's) well done!
In the 70's there were 3 Bristow Engineers sponsored for pilot training. Terry Burnal (Bell Rep for many years) was the first, I was the second and Mark H was the third. Once on the ramp at Guernsey, we met Mr Alan Bristow who seemed to recognise myself and Mark from our days in the hangars. He glanced across at G-BVNH and complimented us on its appearance.
He then said, "just as well you chaps are engineers, you need to be, with one of those!"
When we bought G-BYDF around Christmas 1997, courtesy of Dave B of Bristow going to Japan to do the survey, we took it to Bristow Redhill for UK Certification and Mod Programme. She only had about 80 hours on the Clock and had been in storage originally owned by Honda we believe. They bought two and of course the boss found out he could only sit in one at a time!
When Mark and I walked into the Redhill Hangar, some of the lads we knew from our days on the spanners shouted "They all come back in the end !"
To which Mark retorted "Yes, but we're the only ones who brought you half a million pounds worth of work !"
It was truly wonderful to work with the boys at Redhill again and some still lovingly look after DF today from Fairoaks. They are first rate blokes and engineers.
Next instalment - how do you operate IFR with precision and regularity underneath the ILS to Guernsey? We cracked that one and it is an interesting tale.
