Amazon has it.
That’s certainly plausible.
In fact the official FAA glossary entry for “apron” differs from the ICAO version only in calling out the the sloping concrete surface leading to/from the water at a seaplane base is the “ramp”, as distinct from the level part which is the “apron”. ICAO’s “apron” definition makes no mention of seaplane facilities.
Called “beaching gear”. In some cases it was a frame as you say.
In other cases it was simply a wheel(s) + tire(s) set and a float that could be partly filled with water to obtain neutral buoyancy. The device would be floated out to the seaplane, then bolted to fittings on one side or the other of the hull fairly forward, with a smaller version for the tail.
See Landing gear (Operation from water) - Wikipedia for more explanation and a pic of one large flying boat on its beaching gear.
The wiki article on the P5M Marlin has a pic of one about to enter the water with its beaching gear attached where you can see the float I’m talking about: P5M-1 VP-45 Jax 1954 - Martin P5M Marlin - Wikipedia.
I’m currently reading Israel Rank – the book Kind Hearts and Coronets was based on. Since it was published in 1907, there are a lot of words and phrases I’m unfamiliar with. I’m reading an annotated edition which has footnoted a lot of things the editors thought needed explanation. Most are helpful, but does Scotland Yard really need to be footnoted?
But one word – not footnoted was pinchbeck, and it was used more than once. I had to google. Turns out it was the name of a particular gold blend used for jewelry and invented by a jeweler named Pinchbeck. Anyone ever heard this word? My edition was published in the 80s, so was that recent enough that the average reader would know what pinchbeck was?
Thanks I didn’t pick up on the ‘Complete’ variation. My local b & m stores don’t carry it either anymore. One of them used to but now list it as unavailable.
Walmart will ship it to me for $2.00 a pack, for 6 biscuits. Meh, I’ll just do it from scratch or frozen.
It’s been used on the (British edition of) Antiques Roadshow, I heard it in a repeat just recently.
I thought I remembered reading about pinchbeck in a Dickens novel, but it turns out I was thinking of this:
Darnell Dockett
Senior partner in the clockmaking firm of Dockett and Dockery. His testimony on the accurate timing of sprint races, the periodicity of 26-stone pendulums, and the combustibility of pinchbeck secures the acquittal of Jeremy Trueblood, and the convictions of Messrs. Maxwell and Walker.
I know of only one instance of rhyming slang that originated in America. In the film Chutney Popcorn, two Americans are quarreling. One of them says “Take a pill!” The meaning was clear from slang current in the 1990s when the film was made: “chill pill” was an elaboration of “chill,” i.e. calm down. Even an American like me could hear “pill” and understand “chill.” I feel like this evolved from ordinary American slang and wasn’t intentionally rhyming slang but fortuitously turned out that way.
I’m pretty sure that wasn’t one of Jonathon Green’s four examples, so that’s #5.
Frustrated at being unable to remember JG’s last example, I tried googling “American rhyming slang” - this thread was hit #5 - and came up with baloney (= phony). I honestly can’t remember if that was JG’s fourth word; maybe we have another.
The search also threw up something on Wordpress which gave Rattler’s hiss as American rhyming slang for “kiss”. That’s a new one on me. Thoughts?
Aside: Saw British standup Nish Kumar last night. He (unironically) used the word “Gotten”. I thought of this thread.
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In 1984, I was bemused how the CD of Diamond Life bore a sticker about the artist’s name: "Pronounced “Shar-day.” How did that r get in there? In what language is “d” pronounced rd? In Fijian, “d” is pronounced nd, so it would’t be without precedent. Just as you can bend the spoon when you mystically realize there is no spoon, so can you make sense of “Shar-day” when you realize there is no R.
Back in the 1990s I read a book by an English traveler in Turkey titled A Fez of the Heart. He wrote several chapters on the history of the fez and his search for a fez in modern Turkey, so I took his title literally and missed the pun. For those nonrhotic Brits “A fez of the heart” is a homonym for “Affairs of the heart.” It took way too many years for that to dawn on me.
Similarly, it took me years to realise that “fa” does sound like “a long, long way to run” in some dialects.
Only in old-timey books. E.g. from Barry Lyndon
‘Didn’t he return you the thirteenpence in copper, and the watch, saying it was only pinch-beck?’
Or from Framley Parsonage
Where, in these pinchbeck days, can we hope to find the old agricultural virtue in all its purity?
And the pun in Led Zeppelin’s “D’yer Mak’er” only works if you pronounce it non-rhotically as " 'd’ja make-a." (It’s a reference to the old joke: “My wife went to the Caribbean.” “Jamaica?” “No, she went of her own accord.”)
No objection to British English itself. It usually acquits itself well. It’s just that the “intrusive R” is the most embarrassing thing they’ve ever done to their language.
I soar a film today, oh boy ??
I sore a film today, oh boy ??
Rael, welcome! We are the Lamia-r-of the pool - that only heightened the weirdness of the “Lamiar” song.
As in the “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa” song? 
Before I moved to Malaysia, I read all the books on Malaysia I could find in the library. They were mostly written by British authors. I was bemused because they kept writing constructions like “The Malay Peninsular is…” or they’d end a sentence with “…the Malay Peninsular.”
So they were using “peninsular” as a noun, when everybody knows it’s an adjective—right? Not everybody. I investigated and found it’s a widespread error, by English writers only, because their nonrhotic brains lost the ability to distinguish the noun form from the adjectival form. In print, no less!
Peninsular is a noun when you’re talking about an area of land that is peninsular.
Actually never mind, I got that wrong, ooops.
Q.E.D., Doper. Kyoo feckin’ Ee Dee.
In fairness, doesn’t American English tend to have the same problem with words that end in D or T? American accents pronouncing those sound awfully similar to my British ear…
As far as I can tell, Jam, Jelly and preserve/conserve have pretty much the same meanings on both sides of the Atlantic (ignoring the Jelly/Jello angle, which is a different thing).
The key difference seems to be the ‘default’ word - in Britain, people will probably casually say ‘jam’ as a generic term that might actually mean any of jam, jelly or preserve, whereas I think in the USA, people perhaps tend to casually say ‘jelly’ as a generic term meaning jelly, jam or preserve