I asked Ken was there any possibility of ringing more power out of the Eta15 to close the gap created by the Bugl engines. He said “No, the 15 is at the end of its development, it means designing a new motor and that's two or three years away”.

On this understanding I decided to carry out extensive structural weight reduction on the new Mistress models to provide higher performance in turn this would mean a lot of practice to get used to the new high speed landings we witnessed at the Nat's.

At the start of the season Ken said he couldn't spare the time to go practising because he had the contract to produce the bolts for a new Rolls Royce jet engine, Ken had in fact purchased a new machine and the steel specifically to manufacture the bolts, I used to watch the machine running at the end of each procedure the bolts had to be sent back to Rolls Royce for inspection and the stamp of approval.