Frank Luft replies

Today I received a letter from Frank which has revealed that the project started much earlier than we first thought.  His engineering mentor who was given him advice about aerofoils and various other technical bits'n'pieces died in 1967.  This sort of suggests that the project may have started around 1965 -unfortunately all the correspondence we have don't have dates on them.  Still, little did they know that they would be going down in history.  Which is like the majority of us -we just get on with Life and enjoy it as best we can.  (And I must now take note of that as I have just become a grandfather for the first time -not that I am ready for that yet!)

Frank also answered some of my questions which had been puzzling us for some time.   Not that they get us further on with the project but at least we now know what he was thinking about at the time.  And which he now says to forget about!

He also recalled his time as a ferry pilot on various aircraft, both large and small, his favourite being the P40 -known to the rest of us as the Kittihawk. He even outranked it against the P51 Mustang, which might surprise some and maybe not others.

His last page, though, was more than a bit of a surprise: he'd like to see the Schneider Cup resurrected -or at least something similar.  The odd thing is that the pilot who won the cup outright for Britain happened to go to the same school as I did. (Obviously not at the same time -I'm not THAT old!)  Nice thought but I can't see it coming -but, as they say, never say "never"!