Ascoteer

You have a one year old and you're trying for another? Wow! That's brave / mad / crazy * * Delete as appropriate.

I would agree that 'Nil nos tremefacit' would be superior to 'Corpus non animum muto' (having been on the ( R ) form of both). Nevertheless that's a fine looking Victor. I just hope that (when I get a round tuit) mine comes out as well!

Pee tube? Dear Gods I thought Albert was bad!

Miggers my dear chap, as an Albert Driver (whether Captain or Co) you flew leg and leg. That is to say on one leg you would do the Comms, on the next you would do the poling. SLF denotes the (single winged) chattering class that makes up part of SODCAT (Society Of Directional Consultants and Allied Trades). In the WAFU world they are known as JAFOs (Just Another F****** Observer). As opposed to us God-like beings that are members of the Twin-Winged Master Race (Walk on Water). On the Dom I routinely flew with 5(!) SLFs... I used to turn the intercomm off and let the buggers argue amongst themselves.

It's pretty amazing what can be achieved wth such an old kit. Most Excellent!

Left handed screwdriver perchance?

That would depend upon the period. AP-101-0701-0703-1A, Sect V was the authority for the RAF Hercs to go into the wraparound cam of Dark Geen and Dark Sea Grey with black lettering / numbers. This publication was issued in May 1987. Prior to that the aircraft were in Dark Green / Dark Sea Grey / Light Aircraft Grey with black serial numbers on the rear fuselage and underwing and white 'ROYAL AIR FORCE' titles on the upper forward fuselage, as well as white fleet nubers (eg 213) on the nose and fin. Despite the fact that the AP quoted above was issued in 1987, by the time I got on Albert (early '90s) the fleet (61 aircraft) had not all been repainted (since this was done as they went into deep maintenance at Marshalls). I flew XV213 with 1312 Flight in the Falklands in 1992 and the aircraft was stll in the earlier scheme (indeed XV213 will be my next Herc build after I complete Snoopy), but I have photographic evidence that by 1995 the aircraft was in the later scheme. The upshot of all this is that you need to check your references / timings carefully.

Ah well see. I flew aeroplanes that didn't ditch well. The Albert that ditched did float but only because it had run out of fuel so the wings acted like 2 great big flotation aids. I'm guessing that Albert doesn't need a sea anchor on account of his size and the fact he ditches so rarely.* * The Albert that ditched was Columbian. It ditched because it ran out of fuel. The crew survived save for the Nav; the Captain shot him for running them out of fuel. Prolly the best way to deal with Self Loading Freight if truth be told!

OK I have to ask. Why does a Sea King have a sea anchor?

Nice Lightning. I would point out however that 56Sqn were at Wattisham not Binbrook.

Nah, got to be a LTF machine, complte with the Binbrook Blue Lion on the fin...

If it's like the ice warning vane fitted to the Dominie, then the pilot had the ability to heat the vane to remove the ice such that the rate of ice accretion might be measured.

Well 2000+ hrs flying Albert helps. I must confess I hadn't nb'd that the flaps were seperate parts from the bays. Accordingly, if you modified the flap tracks I agree you could get a 50% flap setting. My major issue with the screw jack boxes is that they appear overscale. While the rib count aft of them is correct, they apper to extend a bit too far aft. This looks to be exacerbated by an overly wide trailing edge fairing. However, the main bugbear is that they are too deep. They should sit below the level of the forward edge of the flap bay.

The maximum speed for opening the Ramp and Door on the Herc was 150kts (185kts for the Door only). Operating at this speed one would have 50% flap set. The flaps on the Herc were of the 'Fowler' type, that is to say they extend backwards from the wing before they start to take on any droop angle, At 50% flap there is full flap extension but not a lot of droop (50% flap is effectively the APPROACH setting and so mainly used to produce lift rather than drag). Looking at the Attack Squadron parts 2 things strike me: a. The amount of flap droop is indicative that the flaps are in the 100% or LAND setting (therefore unsuitable for an airdrop scenario). b The flap screw jack boxes (on the inboard flaps) don't look right to me.

Surely it isn't a Lewis gun but a Vickers K ?

The nightmare with Albert was that on the NVG airframes, what would normally be RED captions, such as the Master FIRE or Nacelle OVERHEAT captions, would light up blue. This meant that for normal daylight operations the captions were almost impossible to see in certain light/glare conditions.

The Tankers (in order of conversion in 1982) were: XV296 XV201 XV204 XV192 Subsequently XV203 and XV213 were converted to C1K (Tanker) standard. XV192 and XV203 were later back converted to 'flat floor' C1 standard owing to the fact that the Andover fuselage tanks had become life-expired (IIRC this was around 1993/94). I'm afraid that XV215 was never a Tanker; in the photo' Beefy shared it is evident that there is no Ram Air Intake (for HDU cooling) forward of the port para door (it would be in line with the window in the para door). I think he's getting confused by the AAR probe fitted above the flight deck on the stbd side. All RAF C1 and C3 aircraft were modified post Falkland to have the probe. The only C-130K that lacked the probe was XV208 the sole Hercules W2 known as 'Snoopy'.

When I was in the 6th Form (many moons ago), we had a Research Machines 380Z with a casette drive and running BASIC. At that time I was heavily into the 'Traveller' role playing game (sort of like Dungeons & Dragons in space); I even used to get Games Workshop's 'White Dwarf' magazine This was in the days when the GW shop was in Ravenscourt Park in London and waaaaaaaaay before any of that Warhammer nonsense. But I digress... White Dwarf regularly did stuff for Traveller (adventure scenarios, character types, and such like). In one of the mags was a 'World Generator' that would give you all sorts of things like Planetary Mass, Gravitation, Atmosphere, Albedo, etc. I spent ages in my should-have-been-studying-free-periods transfering the tables and probabilities into a BASIC programme - all sorts of If X=Y GOTO: and if A=Z GOSUB: routines. It took forever but boy was it going to be good when it was done and how it would impress my school chums! Yeah... Imagine my horror when I loaded the programme up for the first time in all its wonderful completeness and the tape drive ate my casette. Bugger! I've never really trusted computers since... It would be 20 years before I got my first PC!

Oi Ced! Don't you go blaming me!

I meant as First Pilot / Captain as opposed to passenger...

Fortunately I never flew anything fast enough to warrant an armoured windscreen coupled with the fear of avian incursion into the flight deck... Oh, ah, hmmm....

Happy Turkey Day Edward. Don't eat too much!

Make sure you bring some Strega Giorgio!

Why not? I'm sure Mrs M and I could have you 'orrible lot sorted out PDQ! (PS Don't want beer but Uisce Beatha TYVM) Then we could set the world to rights. In fact, factor in Mrs F and (I reckon) you'd have an unstoppable force...

The 'Toom pilot fellah was the Skipper in Series 3 (Cdr Glenn), in Series 4 the Skipper was ex-Nuc boat (Capt Holt). My favourite was the Skipper in both Series 1 and 2 (Cdr Nialls), not least cos he was rather dishy.