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DESPITE having worked in the Aircraft Industry for many years, I had never considered the importance of connectors to the operational efficiency of aircraft. That is, until one dark night when I was driving back into London along the M4 motorway, in the centre lane, at a steady 70mph cruise, the engine suddenly stopped. I declutched, disengaged the gear and coasted on, looking for a gap in the nearside traffic to reach the hard shoulder. When I tried to signal left I realised I had suffered a total electrical failure. After a cold wait the AA man came to my rescue, pulled the loom of wires from the engine bulkhead, cleaned up the pins and replaced it. The engine, lights and indicators sprang back into life. I learned about connectors that night!

NUTS and bolts are not the most glamorous of products used in engineering. I never had enough of them when I built ambitious projects in Meccano, so the structures I created tended to lack rigidity. I expect this had something to do with my early days as a tame stressman; then at least I could count on sufficient high tensile steel bolts to give me a reserve factor greater than 2. We tend to look at aircraft and see their smooth rivetted skins and nowadays we marvel at the enormous components made possible by skin milling and composite materials. We overlook the humble nut and bolt But humble though they may be nuts and bolts are still with us playing a vital role and I am sure they always will be.

WITH current commercial airliner sales showing a marked upward trend, and operators replacing ageing aircraft that have served them well for the last 15 to 20 years, the market for furnishing equipment, notably galley units, has rarely been so buoyant. Old stainless steel structures, heavy but reliable, are being replaced by incredibly lightweight units made from immensely strong honeycomb bonded structures, in materials such as Fibrelam made by Ciba‐Geigy, which conform fully to the flammability and toxicity regulations which were introduced by the Civil Aviation Authority two or three years ago, to improve the chances for passenger escape in the event of aircraft fires.

IT is no idle claim that, outside of airframe and engines, the biggest supplier of equipment for the Tornado is Westland Technology of Yeovil, Somerset. The Normalair‐Garrett company provides a wide variety of life support and environmental control systems with associated valves, rotating machinery and sensitive regulation and control equipment for the aerospace industry. The Services tend to regard time expired or unserviceable pieces of such equipment as unrepairable or as throw‐away items, to be replaced when necessary by new units direct from stores. But with the need to place greater reliance on outside contractors the RAF has found out that some equipment it used to treat as disposable has come back from the product support organisations as good as new.