Concorde

With poor weather forecast we decided to take our visiting grandchildren to The Museum of Flight at East Fortune.  They particularly enjoyed the interactive activities and were fascinated by the immense size of Concorde although it seemed very cramped inside.  The photo is of the plane from beneath the tail as it was very difficult to get a good picture due to its size and the lights. In the 70s we saw it frequently as my sister lived under Concorde’s approach to RAF Fairford which was its main test base and it never failed to impress us.
Contrasting with the huge supersonic Concorde is a tiny homemade Turbulent plane (extra)
John Sharp used plans designed by a Frenchman and built this microlight at home.  It was not a kit and the plans were in French so it was fairly difficult to understand if he met a problem.  Also the house was not really big enough to build a plane but as the construction progressed, with one wing in one bedroom and the other wing in the bedroom across the hall, at night the family had to crawl under the wings to get to bed. A further problem was trying to bend the plywood into shape without having the suitable equipment so he had to use the bath to get enough hot water and steam to bend it.  He used a 1.5 VW car engine and the fuel gauge was a knitting needle with a cork at its base showing that the lower the needle sank the less fuel there was. He completed the final assembly in the adjacent school playground in 1974.
It was capable of reaching 109mph (175kmh) with a range of 250 miles (402 km.) and John flew it regularly for 25 years until 1999.