Sorry for the late reply guys but been up in the mountains and only just got back.
Sounds as if there might have been a bit of a bun fight over at Salon du Chapeau as Charles has either been given the boot or got the hump and closed down the thread.
I talked a few times with him years ago and found him to be a nice chap. Over recent years though he'd seemed to get a bit unsavoury. He basically said that VLJ member Cocker was a racist a couple of years back for questioning whether a Buzz jacket was based on an actual one when it obviously wasn't. Charles in his marketing had been going on about it being so, and didn't take kindly to be found out to be telling porkies. He posted a whole lot of racist WWII posters about the Japanese and pretty much said that that was Cocker's attitude. He went down a long way in my estimation after that.
I think the last time I posted over there was about the Buzz red MA-1 which Charles was making out to be the jacket worn by F-89 test pilots. He'd been talking quite a lot of marketing drivel about it which was nonsense but he was trying to set as truth, and when I posted that It wasn't and supported it with photos he got pretty stroppy with me.
I think he knows quite a bit but what perhaps doesn't work as well for him, he tries to twist the truth about certain of his offerings to make them sound as if they are based on real jackets when some of them are quite simply not. He'd be far better off not making things up and being straight up about what he offers. If a jacket is one of those Buzz fantasy jackets, don't spin a load of codswallop but just say it's inspired by such and such.
Saying that in these trying times, I hope he's well and doing fine. After all this is only clothing. If anything has made us realise that this stuff is really way outside the periphery of what's really important it's now. Getting into fights over this stuff isn't worth it.