Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Wikiwander.

Every now and again I manage to learn something completely new and fascinating about a field on which I had considered myself fairly well informed: Behold, Miss Shilling's Orifice.

(Beatrice "Tilly" Shilling's wiki entry. We loves her.)

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

So, reading the entry it would appear that Miss Shilling's Orifice was a ... ummm ... stopgap measure?

It's only 9 and I'm blushing.

Anonymous said...

Dag, I knew they had the problem, I didn't know how they fixed it.
My old man would never have given his big air cooled radials away for anything, they were just too rugged, damn near bulletproof.
But he did have a twinkle in his eye once when he mentioned a night in Manila, just after the Japs had been pushed out, as he listened to a flight of Mustangs coming back from a patrol. He called those Merlins the sweetest sounding engines in the world. High praise indeed from a Navy airedale.

Anonymous said...

Oh shame on you Tammy!
I followed the Wiki on her to the Norton site, and was painfully reminded that the greatest disappointment of my life is that I don't own a Norton 850S Commando.
Oh the pain, the emptiness!

NotClauswitz said...

OMG - they ran Stromberg SU's on Merlin engines??? Jeezus, did they have Lucas electrics too?? OMG apparently they did, later on, sorta...

word: fritig - twas fritig in the slithy toves, did stumble and gymble in the manifolds...

Turk Turon said...

She raced motorcycles at Brooklands in the 1930's? She is lucky to have survived that.

WV: hamatic, n., a fanatic radio amateur.

Anonymous said...

I caught the reference when I read it, and I can't help but giggle a bit regardless.

Ride Fast said...

Damn clever woman. Thanks for sharing.

The Old Man said...

After reading this and being a linker to your site there can be no question why.
I've gone to Indy for Open Fields - and I will sometime for a blogmeet. (Sorry, the laff-tears are still flowing.)
"There are more things, Horatio,...

Anonymous said...

I betcha they didn't call it that within her hearing. :-)

She sounds like she would have (metaphorically) happily ripped out their still beating hearts in a most english and polite way.

Anonymous said...

DirtCrashr-

Do you know why the British drink warm beer? Lucas makes refrigeration!

(Yes, I've owned Triumphs.)

Anonymous said...

Roy--

Then you understand why mechanics call Lucas the "Prince of Darkness"...;)

Old Squid