The first was in late January when a team of six engineers and technicians likely to be involved in the latest development, the Sea Harrier for which a Ministry of Defence contract was confidently soon expected, spent three days on the old HMS 'Ark Royal' getting acquainted with carrier operations. They were: John Apted who led the team, Richard Cannon, Charlie Cray, John Farrow, one other, and myself. By coincidence the date was just a week short of the tenth anniversary of the first ever jet V/STOL aircraft vertical landing on a carrier - the pilot was Bill Bedford; the date 8th February 1963, the ship Ark Royal.
    The second event was on 9th February when Jim Calkin and I gave lectures at the College of Aeronautics at Cranfield on V/STOL performance prediction and evaluation, respectively. For this I had prepared some notes which out of courtesy I submitted in advance to Ralph Hooper, now Executive Director and Chief Engineer, Kingston. In them I had stated, "Ralph Hooper was the Project Engineer assigned to investigate the application of the BE.53 engine to a V/STOL aircraft." Ralph deleted the words "...assigned to investigate..." and replaced them with "...who interested himself, out of curiosity, in..." This was one occasion when the 'cat' was not killed, fortunately for all of us.
    Well done Ralph - congratulations!