[johnfowles]

The following is roughly what I drafted out as a possible response to an earlier thread regarding then current concert reviews but never got around to posting.

In the bar at the Northampton MA Hotel back in September I could not help overhearing a conversation between two men near to me one was a Lightfoot fan there for that evening's concert the other introduced himself as the pilot of a hired business jet from a pool of,I think he said, 22 machines based inToronto and available for lease whenever their owners were not using them.He said he had just flown Gord and the band the half hour from Harvard (whilst Chuck and the equipment truck,the coachload of helpers and ourselves had endured the three hours trek along the Mass Turnpike).He also said that the jet was an Astrajet.As an aeroplane fan and one time planespotter I immediately thought of the tortuous history of that aeroplane and I had googled well. My detailed notes are now mislaid but from memory the story began in the early 1950's when a new company (Aero Commander) introduced a very neat twin piston engined/propellor business aircraft of the same name they later developed a smart looking jet powered version dubbed not surprisingly the Jet Commander (one of the very earliest busjets). The subsequent history of this aeroplane is complicated but goes something like this:
Aero Commander was firstly absorbed into the North American Rockwell conglomerate then sold on to Israel Aircraft Industries who not surprisingly shifted the entire operation to their factory in Israel and renamed it the Astrajet they later relaunched it as the Legacy before transferring sales and promotion back to the USA to Grumman who then added it to their existing Gulfstream product line as the models 100 and 200.As for the original Aero Commander it devolved into the Shrike Commander and the company employed a master demonstration pilot called Bob Hoover and I saw Bob's amazing display at one of the UK's Farnborough Air Displays. Fortunately several youtube videos exist of this remarkable display during which Bob stops both engines them nonchalently loops the loop and lands first on one wheel and then the other:-