Neville Duke RIP

[airjiml2]

I'm sort of shocked that this hasn't been bigger news, but I recieved an e-mail this morning that Neville Duke passed away over the weekend.

Jim

[Skii]

Bit of a legend really - a test pilot who lived to a ripe old age.

RIP Neville

[Mike]

Aye... just read up on him a little after you posted. RIP.

[Grant]

I can't believe I didn't hear anything about that at the weekend. Sad news indeed.

Just finished the Alex Henshaw article in Aeroplane monthly - so many of the early names are moving on. There is not the 'buzz' about aviation nowadays is there?

Grant

[Phil @ Flory Models]

Sad News indeed

RIP Neville

[Darius at Home]

I have almost finished his book "Test Pilot" - an excellent read about his flying with the RAF in the Second World War and flight testing with Hawkers in the late 40s and 50s.

Shame that there has to my knowledge been no mention of his passing on the BBC. I have heard from a friend of mine who posts on PPRUNE that The Times did not think an obituary was appropriate as Neville Duke was not famous today. I understand, however, that the Daily Telegraph is planning an oppropriate obituary - good for them!!!

Darius

[Darius at Home]

In today's Daily telegraph...

Neville Duke

Darius

[John]

Very sad. He did his Spitfire training at my local airfield, Grangemouth, with 58 OTU.

John

[zeke]

aaawwww...didn't hear anything on the news???...He was something of a hero of mine when I was younger...

Wherever he is now, i bet he's flying!

[Paul Alan Bardell]

Have just seen this.

 

 

 

 

RIP Neville Duke

 

 

 

 

[bzn20]

He died In 2007 . RIP.

He was a gentleman , I worked with him on pre flight cockpit MODs on the Edgley Optica. He was one of the test pilots.

 

See if you can get hold of his old paperback...Test Pilot, its brilliant.

Edited April 29, 2017 by bzn20

[Meatbox8]

I do remember a TV feature on the great man at the time of his passing. 

[junglierating]

Edgley Optica. Blimey thats going back a bit....were they made at Lee on Solent or somesuch.

As for the man...life goes on.....must be the last of the celibrity test pilots.....bit before my time but read about them

[junglierating]

Im confysedhe died ten years ago not great news but it has to happen

[bzn20]

On ‎01‎/‎05‎/‎2017 at 4:19 PM, junglierating said:

Edgley Optica. Blimey thats going back a bit....were they made at Lee on Solent or somesuch.

As for the man...life goes on.....must be the last of the celibrity test pilots.....bit before my time but read about them

 

Old Sarum, Ex RFC airfield about a couple of miles from New Sarum............AKA Salisbury !

 

[PLC1966]

Remember seeing the Optica at Farnborough show.  Seemed good idea to me, surprised no one took it further.

[TheLurker]

1 hour ago, PLC1966 said:

Remember seeing the Optica at Farnborough show.  Seemed good idea to me, surprised no one took it further.

IIRC it had engine reliability problems which rather dented enthusiasm for it.

 

 *Toddles off to check*  .... *One quick Goggle later*  ...

 

Not engine. Fatigue issues in the fan hub see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgley_Optica but they were sorted out in short order.

 

[stevej60]

Even a kit of it!http://pwm.org.pl/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=82167&sid=8de389b03667b65ad19df64d41d0c360&start=45

 

[junglierating]

1 minute ago, stevej60 said:

Even a kit of it!http://pwm.org.pl/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=82167&sid=8de389b03667b65ad19df64d41d0c360&start=45

 

OOOOOHHH

[bzn20]

1 hour ago, TheLurker said:

IIRC it had engine reliability problems which rather dented enthusiasm for it.

 

 *Toddles off to check*  .... *One quick Goggle later*  ...

 

Not engine. Fatigue issues in the fan hub see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgley_Optica but they were sorted out in short order.

 

Part one

The problems were just about all management concentrating on "stuff" instead getting aircraft built. I'll come back to that.

The propellers were made of Jabroc or Jabrock (Google it). Thin layers of wood glued together really dense ,heavy material. They painted an Optica including the  prop white for a customer. After about 5-10 running hours cracks showed up. The fan was well and truly hit. They found all the fitted props were cracked, only because the one was painted did the problem come to notice. Going back a bit they'd discounted using metal blades due to cost, they had to change to metal in the end. I wouldn't read too much wiki about Edgley, We were living the nightmare on hourly disasters.

I arrived there June 1985 to start work in Customisation responsible for fitting the instrument binnacle with Avionic suite and all instruments. I had to make the dashboard in Ally plate, cut every hole for dials and radio/Avionics (Fairy Gear!)

Within 30 minutes a bloke came to my workshop, got a radio for you. Radio? So you can listen to something !! Blimey! A bit later I got a kettle, mug, Tea, Coffee, milks in the fridge !

Next day ish. Heres a couple of tool catalogues (Snap-on and Proto !) You've got £2,000 and another £1000 per month ! He'd had a rocket for not spending the tooling budget. I spent 4 days on that. I wouldn't mind but I'd turned up with 4 full tool boxes ,enough to build a plane without support except for Buzz guns (light rivet guns for 3/32 rivets)

Could you build a tool box to house these new tools ? Yes,so another 3-4 days building that.

I also had a company account at Castle tools in Salisbury . Blew a £1000 in there. Waste of money. Mine was good enough.

The Edgley Optica parts drawings were done with a CNC in mind so when I had to make something like the Dash board,the datum (where all the measurements are taken from was (wait for it!) 6 foot off the drawing ! It took me a day to work out how to start and keep it to the datum. The dash center was 7 foot from the drawing. I had marks all over the floor and had to glue the drawing to a bench so nothing moved. After the first I could replicate it very quickly.

 

Meanwhile on the CNC a guy who was a "Wiz" with CNC theories worked out all the CNC things. Time for a test piece to see if it was correct. No that's too easy. He got ten 6x4 foot sheets, taped them together and cut hundreds of blanks for angles/brackets/stringers. He hadn't tested and it wasn't right wasted 10 sheets and hours of "theories!

Every month Alcan bought two trucks to Edgely, one full of material the other was empty to take the scrap away, bulk of which came from the CNC "wiz".

More later !! Got to go out

It gets worse ! I get a 'phone !

Edited May 2, 2017 by bzn20

[bzn20]

Edgley Pt 2

One morning my boss tells me British Telecom are coming today to put a line in to your work shop. He was next door, I didn't need a phone. Oh well, phone arrives, no phone line, I'll have to come back. He does with 2 others and a digging crew ! A 5-6ft trench, conduit, holes in walls, line all the way through the workshop (this was the original RFC Flt Office) All day it went on for a phone line not really needed but came in handy !

Hangar one, thats the one that was burnt down in an arson attack about a year later and featured on Crime Watch UK, half was the production line .aircraft   in herringboned rows. The electricians needed a loom shop which need really long benches, this needed a building inside the production line so now we had to put up with a single line of aircraft. Half the building capacity. In June the order book stood at 80 Opticas, some were cancelled but new orders were taken and  keep it at around 80. The genius that thought of it was the Prod. manager. Recruited from a boot factory in Northampton ! Knew nothing about aeroplanes except that they flew.

Thirty Thousand pounds was spent on a signing in/Clocking in system.

Manpower was bussed in everyday from the Isle of Wight, well Southsea really after the ferry trip ! Another bus load from somewhere else that had a large number of aircraft fitters of all disciplines. Can't remember exactly but I've got South Wales and Bristol in my head. Must have cost a fortune.

 

One Saturday one of the R&D wreckers, a female eng. student  was walking through the sub assembly shop, Hangar two passed the centre section jig with the prop. duct wing attachment points,Cockpit etc. This was what everything hung off. Some fitter is riveting, she mentioned to the Factory Manager ...I'd like to have a go at that. So he lets her have a go. The fitter asked her if she'd ever riveted before...No. Okay , I'll block, heres a gun (4X a bit heavy for this job, 1/8th CSK rivets and thin gauge sheet). Not even a practise to see how it feels. RIVET...Shes off all across the centre section though the sheet smashing her way through frames, stringers the works...Wrecked! It was nearly finished and required yesterday ! Thousand of pounds in material and manpower gone!

There is loads more but the aeroplane was fine, great idea, should have sold hundreds. A willing workforce, a lot of ex forces, heavy at the navy end.

They just couldn't get them out quick enough and spent too much money, wasted too much . Major insurance companies had invested quite a bit in Edgley's dream, in the end they pulled the plug. Oct 18th 1985 about 3 pm we, the contract stall were told to go ! I never got paid for the last week. My agency went bust, Castle Tools were owed a couple of thousand..I felt sorry for the Edgley guys, they thought they'd be there building them for years.

On the night of my first day my dad asked how it went, I told him if they're still here in a year I'll be amazed.

[upnorth]

8 hours ago, stevej60 said:

Even a kit of it!http://pwm.org.pl/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=82167&sid=8de389b03667b65ad19df64d41d0c360&start=45

 

 

That kit's a drive from the rough if ever there was one. I have it stashed away somewhere and sometimes take it out to look at it and try to decide where to start with it.

 

It's going to take some serious skills as both a model builder and researcher to get it right. It represents only the earliest prototype and from what few pictures I can find online of the real subject, the cockpit details are quite off in both shape and scale. it also has pour stubs in some of the most bizarrely inconvenient of places.

 

 

[stevej60]

10 hours ago, bzn20 said:

, I told him if they're still here in a year I'll be amazed.

What a superb insight into what went on,I've seen this so many times over the last forty year's every character Mentioned I've come across

at some point and a lot of the wasting of money too and yet even now the same procession of "Billy Bullsh*****'s still cross my path!

[bzn20]

11 hours ago, upnorth said:

 

That kit's a drive from the rough if ever there was one. I have it stashed away somewhere and sometimes take it out to look at it and try to decide where to start with it.

 

It's going to take some serious skills as both a model builder and researcher to get it right. It represents only the earliest prototype and from what few pictures I can find online of the real subject, the cockpit details are quite off in both shape and scale. it also has pour stubs in some of the most bizarrely inconvenient of places.

 

 

 

 

Go down the page until you see those pages numbered as below

Here you go a stack of downloadable PDFs from Flight Int magazine 1984 It runs for four pages 0733-0736 and includes a good cutaway

https://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1984/1984 - 0733.html

 

AND

 

From 1985 runs to pages 0741- 0743..This has a great view of a binnacle fully furnished insitu with instruments and King Avionics.

https://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1985/1985 - 0741.html

https://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1985/1985 - 0742.html

 

Any problems downloading let me know.

 

A Flt Sim cockpit, looks pretty good to me.

http://wiki.flightgear.org/File:Edgley_Optica_cabin_01.jpg

 

Individual Optica histories with pics. I worked on 002,003, 005-010

http://www.optica.co.uk/Aircraft Histories.html

 

Edited May 3, 2017 by bzn20

[viscount806x]

21 hours ago, bzn20 said:

 I had to make the dashboard in Ally plate, cut every hole for dials and radio/Avionics (Fairy Gear!)

 

Very informative tale but that bit above is a bit of a cheek from an ancillary trade.......

 

Only kidding, sorry. I'm an ex 'Fairy' and no, I never did open or close the hangar doors either.

That last bit's a lie too, I did, many times. In fact I had to take the rest of the shift off once and sit at Otley A&E having trapped my finger in the doors.

 

Nige B