Navigating the UK the Old Fashion Way
I landed in London, UK, to see old friends and tour flight test organizations. First evening, I visited my old buddy, Dane Handley, from the days of my exchange tour way back in 1993! The next day, I rented a "Bond" car and prepared myself for driving the opposite side of the road in the rain with minimal guidance from a backup mobile phone with intermittent GPS guidance. The trip was successful in that I made it to all my destinations with only an occasional irate driver upset that I was in the wrong lane or going too slow as I relied on dead reckoning and memory to navigate NARROW country roads, continually hitting the left curb trying to avoid oncoming traffic. It did require to occasionally find a coffee shop with Wi-Fi to get reoriented and back on track. My first stop was the Empire Test Pilot School at Boscombe Down, now run by QinetiQ. ETPS has an impressive stable of aircraft, including the AVRO RJ70, which facilitates the training of multip...