glad rag: Oh dear, obviously my post was FAR to subtle for you sd....
Ahh, gotcha glad rag- sarcasm can be very tough to to pick up on e-forums, especially when you seemed to be downplaying the current trials in the previous sentances, sorry. Indeed landing a tail sitter booster rocket on a barge is no easy feat.
Engines: So, in around 13 days, 98 flights and 73 flying hours, from 6 jets. From a small deck and a tiny hangar. Not bad going, in my book
I agree, and I imagine they got some more sorties in as the article was written with a few days left to go on the eval. Those figures were were for about 9 days, and I imagine the first day was to reach the op area off North Carolina, and not sure if they flew everyday (weekeends and the Monday holiday of Memorial Day tend to be a normal/flight duty day at sea, especially for shorter duration trials). Yes, I realize that many of the sorties were short duration qualification hops (pilots were to do 4 night landings to get their night qual.) So this averages around 16 flights per aircraft.
Nice to see the UK folks imbedded into the trials and USMC squadrons.