Buster11 (#9139),
...on a thread that must surely be due some sort of prize for being the most divergent from its actual title...
The special virtue of "Pilot's Brevet" is that we are under the wise supervision of our infinitely tolerant Moderators, who early realised that old fellas ramble off in all directions - but can always be counted on to come home for tea. So they allow us enormous rope, provided that we play nicely and are never rude to each other.
In consequence, they have presided over the eight-year growth of the most popular Thread on "Military Aviation" Forum (and possiblly on any other PPRuNe Forum). To back this up, I invite you to consider only Threads which have over 5,000 replies (ie Posts) - to allow the Law of Large Numbers to come into play - and then divide the number of "Views" (ie "hits") by the number of replies.
Who would dispute that that the number of hits per Post is a fair indicator of popularity ?
The results are striking:
"Caption Competition" (which you would suppose to romp away from the field)........140.
"F-35 Cancelled, then what ?" (could be renamed: "Now what's the matter with it ?)...163.
"Gaining an R.A.F. Pilot's Brevet in WWII"....(wait for it, rumble of drums) ................239.
Yes, it deserves some form of prize !
...I wandered about on the airfield (nobody seemed to mind reasonably-behaved small boys then)...
It was so, I remember when we senior boys from St. Joseph's were allowed out for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoons (but caps had to be worn so that miscreants could be identified and reported to the College). Our favourite port of call was Stanley Park Aerodrome (about a mile away) . We wandered in, closely inspected the Gypsy, Puss and all sorts of other Moths and various things in the open hangars, and watched the Club flying at a respectful distance. But we we would not go into a cockpit, only looked through cabin windows, were careful not to do any harm, and would have been horrified at the very idea of any theft or vandalism.
It is hard to remember such days now.
Danny.