Rickoshea52

As a spotty LAC I was once told by a grizzled old snec that as long as the jockey could see out of his window he didn’t give a s**t about the puddle of oil/fuel under his cab. This was true until a particularly obnoxious 7 sqn (who else?) crewman made it his mission to complain about every stain/puddle he could see when doing a crew in, often using his fingers to scoop the offending fluid up for a sniff check - after a while his flying gloves began to smell of stale wee!

I can’t remember on the TRD canoes but they were prone to erosion (many were holed) so could have been blown off in flight. No idea what they’re were for either.

The terminology we used was bomb bay; weapons bay is just another term that was rarely heard by my ears. ”The pannier extends the length of the fuselage...and forms the radome, Doppler bay, bomb bay and rear equipment bay.”; Source: Nimrod MR2 Airframes Systems course notes. An observation on the radome, the kit has diagonal engraved lines either side; these appear to match a black painted area on MR1’s in white/grey however I am not convinced there should be these panel lines; they certainly weren’t present on MR2’s that I ever saw.

It depends on the colour of the underlying paint...and how long it takes to attract dirt! it shows up nicely against Sea King yellow.

Probably a bit late with this. As I recall the TRD (turd) was fitted in a modified ESM fairing (canoe) on top of the fin. I never saw one fitted or deployed but did do a composite repair to a removed one which had a section of the rear end cut down vertically for the TRD to be deployed similar to a refuelling drogue type affair.

Haha! Yes. It remains the only pub I ever got thrown into. ASF Kinloss were the happiest times I had in the RAF.

Hi Andy, As a former member of D flt at Lossiemouth (2002-5) I’m watching this with interest.

I’m just adding the finishing touches to a 1/32 GR1

The Nimrod had four hydraulic systems - Blue, Green, yellow and red. The blue system was for the flying controls powered by engine driven pumps. The green system was also EDP powered and supplied the flying controls, airbakes, flaps, landing gear, wheel brakes & anti skid, camera doors and bomb doors. The yellow system was powered by an electric pump for the flying controls. The red system was also electrically powered and operated the flaps, landing gear and wheel brakes (without anti-skid) - this all from memory so it may be a little fuzzy. The red system was also used by the armourers to flare the bomb doors for stores loading. The hydraulic oil was OX-87, sometimes referred to as Nimor or Nimor 87 which I was told replaced OF-4, certainly by 1992 at least. Other oils were used on the aircraft - the searchwater radar scanner was powered by OM-15 - which also dries to a light pink colour depending on the amount of oil and length of time left uncleared; curiously the best thing to clean up dried OM-15 is clean OM-15. I can’t remember clearly now but I think it was OX-27/8 for the cold air units. The windscreen wipers were hydraulically powered by closed circuit system powered by two motors located in the nose landing gear bay. The main landing gear oleos retained OF-4 for a while and may have changed over to OX-87 during the early nineties. HTH.

I recall sitting by the open door of a 230 Sqn Puma as it provided top cover to a 72 Sqn Wessex landing troops in a field near Londonderry. I had a clear view of the yellow rotor blade as the rotors were turning below... and feeling a bit anxious that my bergen might tumble out of the cab if we banked any harder.

I’ve been building models since I was a kid with the obligatory distractions of life that include beer, birds, work and now a family. When I returned to modelling it was confined to OO gauge railways but this has now moved back to my original interest in aircraft and aviation. My builds are WW2 onwards and mostly RAF related as I spent 14 years as a rigger on Puma’s, Chinooks, Sea Kings and Nimrods. These days I am still in the aerospace industry with lots of travel opportunity working on A350-1000, A380, Q400, CRJ700/900/1000 and the occasional Boeing aircraft . I try to visit aircraft/military museums and model shops wherever I go - I’m a massive museum nerd. If/when I figure out how to post pictures I’ll share share some of my previous work or future builds. Rick

Hi Ced, I hope you don’t mind another interested viewer to your Nimrod build, I’ve been following from the sidelines and only just joined the BM site. Having spent a number of years working on Nimrod MR2’s in ASF at Kinloss I can confirm that the bomb bay (not weapons bay) door insulation was removed in the mid nineties. I spent plenty of time replacing missing plastizote with pots of evilstik and PRC during my first tour in ASF, I left in October 1995. By the time I returned in 1998 this insulation was no longer fitted. The AlleyCat resin bomb bay insert is very good, though in my opinion has a glaring error, the hydraulic equipment hatch (just forward of the bomb bay mixing chamber) is cast 90 degrees out. I bought this detail set myself for a Nimrod build I did a few years ago and was left somewhat let down my this oversight. For the searchlight, I used a silver sequin and piece of plastic rod, occasionally some Nimrods would have the searchlight removed leaving a vacant clear cupola. Youve done a great job so far and I look forward to seeing this complete. P.s. if you are interested you can read about my Nimrod build in another forum here - https://www.scale-models.co.uk/threads/nimrod-mr2-airfix-1-72.18974/ P.P.S. My recollection is the plastizote was black, we also used it for tool kit inserts. I did see patch repairs with light blue/blueish green sometimes.