Aircraft General Discussion

We lived at Cotton End for a number of years and saw all sorts of "home made' blimps - never a dull day there.
BobH

'Ere you go, Martin:

I hope they put the toys away before it started blowing hard this morning!

Andrew

Andrew,

We stopped this afternoon to have a look and it must be tethered all around as it wasn't moving about at all even though it was blowing hard.

Dr Dave, from that position there is a well trodden path across a field now as there were several people and cars moving about.

Martin P

Doooh, I flew over Bedford yesterday to look at my mums' house and I completely missed seeing the airship, although I could clearly see Cardington. Did you get the impression it was tethered, or on a swivel mast so it always pointed into wind like the R100 and R101?

Andrew

It may have been on a swivel mast but its so low to the ground and I wasn't able to see the front completely but other airships i've seen there tend to sway as the wind direction alters but this one didn't seen to be doing that hence I assumed it was tethered in several places.

Martin P

That bears an extraordinary resemblance to the aircraft in the video of A Solitary Man by Hawkwind see at 2:37. Also the pic that accompanies the lyrics to Hexagone in the leaflet for The Machine Stops.

Bonus points to anyone who knows the connection with Vaughan Williams

Neil

Surely it should be a connection with Iron Maiden?

Andrew

The Lark Ascending?

Or am I being cynical about airships?

JA

Hi guys, fresh from my recent encounters with V22 Ospreys in Yorkshire & Cambridgeshire, I set aside some time on our latest trip down there to sneak up on them where they live, purely by accident I discovered a place called The Nook Camp Site & Aircraft viewing area right next the main runway at Mildenhall, they where all there, some folded up as they are for stowage on aircraft or helicopter carriers, also saw Hercules, Globemaster & KC135 Tanker, the address is Pollards Lane, West Row, Suffolk IP28 8RA, took a bit of finding down one lane farm tracks, put a couple of quid in the honesty box & there you go, would you believe that right next to the fence there is a 60 foot flat bed trailer with a stepladder bolted to the end & a staircase all along it built of pallets so that at the highest point you are well above the top of the chain link with decorative razor wire fence, no trying to take pictures through the wire for me then!

Moving right along, this weeks outing to Bedfordshire, a campsite a few miles from Old Warden for the Shuttleworth Collections Edwardian Pageant, of course largely between the 2 World Wars aircraft with the odd display from their two Hawker Hurricanes. However, on a gloriously sunny day I only had eyes for my beautiful red DH88 Comet Racer, accompanied by Alex Henshaws (original) Percival Mew Gull & a modern replica thereof, in formation & solo displays, taking such matters as seriously as he did the Mew Gull was souped up for the Kings Cup Air Race which he duly won & of course the famous airline proving flight to Cape Town & back, to round this somewhat protracted post off, it was only at the display that I noticed that prodigious feat commenced from Mildenhall

Anyway, must get on, this retirement lark does not plan itself, I have recently come the conclusion that I should have started 40 years ago so that I could have got a flying run at it.

Cheers Bob.

Its many a year since I spotted at Mildenhall and I didnt know that site existed so thanks for that, you should have had a look at Lakenheath where the F15 strike eagles are based, at the back of the base you can get up on a hill and look down onto the base, did you say that the DH88 was flying, I only live about four miles from Old Warden Airfield and its not been up for years.

Just read the DH88 was put back into the air in 2014, thats what happens when you live close by, you can always go tomorrow but never actually do!

Martin P

Edited By martin perman on 09/08/2016 17:39:20

Edited By martin perman on 09/08/2016 17:39:57

Yes it is

The LP and book (by E M. Forster) contain a line that is in the poem that inspired Vaughan Williams music.

"Seraphically free from the taint of personality" (not an issue round here!)

I hear the MOD describe a helicopter bursting into flames as a 'technical problem'.

Neil

Like call a hydrogen bomb a device?

JA

Hi, Martin the Comet Racer was indeed flying, I built the Airfix kit of it when I was 11! last time I saw it was maybe a couple of years ago when it was in pieces all over the floor, on Sunday last however on a gloriously sunny day I saw it fly for the one & only time in my life, I was more than happy at that. With regard to the F15 Eagle, we get our fair share up here in Lincolnshire, at a certain time they turn up dogfighting over the open country between Grantham & Lincoln, there are 3 dimensional radar ranges over RAF Waddington & the North Sea I believe, one day whilst sitting in my laughingly misnamed garden I saw one embark on a wide climbing turn when it launched a full string of decoy flares, not something you see every day, if you went by the uproar in the local paper you would think they were cluster bombs!, anyway looks like more hanging on the chain link is on the agenda when I find myself on a mission nearby, this retirement does not plan itself, I have come to the conclusion I should have started 40 years ago to get a flying start. Bob

If the flaming helicopter burns a civilian that's 'collateral damage'. If the cause was pilot error, depending on the degree of daftness, the pilot reports to the Commanding Officer for 'an interview without coffee', or 'to get a sucking chest wound'.

Dave

Bob ,you want a good sound step ladder that you can sit on top of, then you can see over the fence unobstructed, you just need a ski rack on the car.      This is one I missed, taken on one of it's early test flights in New Zealand, KA 114 before it was shipped .to the USA and it's owner Jerry Yagen.  Rebuilt by Avspecs, and Glyn Powell, at Ardmore, near Auckland.

Ian S C

Edited By Ian S C on 10/08/2016 13:59:24

> Hi, Martin the Comet Racer was indeed flying, I built the Airfix kit of it when I was 11!

Me too, I have an unmade one in the workshop, but it;'s the green one (not Gosvenort House, teh red one). I might paint it as the black one just to be awkward

I would love to see a flying Westland Whirlwind (fighter not copter).

Neil

Hi, Neil you & me both, Westland Whirlwind a fighter size aircraft with two Merlin engines & more importantly four Hispano Suiza type 4 20mm cannons close grouped in the nose, oh, sorry mate we aint got no Merlin engines to spare ( zap game over ), shame really because we had cannons to cobble dogs with, in Grantham there was the British Manufacture & Research Company manufacturers of HS cannons to the aristocracy ( £105 at the factory gate guv ), both of my parents worked there at the beginning of the war, Mum an inspectress,& Dad a fitter/turner by trade, I know all the legends, Bmarco made several hundred thousand cannons & millions of rounds of ammunition, to cut a few corners a foreman from the factory went over to France & with the aid of some soldiers & a 3 ton Bedford stole key pieces of machinery from the french factory & spirited it away from the advancing German army at the time of Dunkirk, sneaky! Me dear old Dad then went into the RAF as an airframe fitter, cannon fitter & Merlin engine fitter. Fast forward to when I lad, there were tunnels at the factory for test firing the guns, about 2 miles from where we were living & when they were testing it was so loud that it felt like you were standing next to them! However to get back to Neils original point, to see what might have been, me Dad started taking me to air shows when I was 4 he told me in adult life that we saw at one display DH Hornets the fighter version of the Mosquito, I couldnt remember that but it was 50 odd years ago, ring any bells? cannon armed twin engined fighter with the speed & agility of a scalded cat, oh what might have been. Bob.

7

One of my favourite kits was an Airfix Westland Whirlwind. Unfortunately they didn't have the Merlin engine, but the smaller Peregrine (it was the only aircraft to us that engine), the prototype actually used a pair of Kestrals. There was talk of a replica being built in Britain a few years back, I'm not sure what was going to be used to power it.

Ian S C

Why are there so many accidents at airshows? I was watching a weekly series on tellie recently , they followed the RAF display team around to various shows . On a particular day, the RAF team were doing a show somewhere, sadly, on the same day at another air show , a Hawker Hunter crashed into a roadway killing a number of motorists, the Hunter pilot survived .

The twin engined fighter discussion had me thinking of Major Richard Bong , the USAAC's highest scoring ace of WW2 and the P38 . He flew the P38 in the South West Pacific theatre , Papua New Guinea mainly - one of the lesser know air combat campaigns of WW2 .