Michou

An accumulator in this context is a rechargeable battery, like the thing in your car and unlike the battery in a torch which is dumped (ecologically :-) ) when it is exhausted. Scarlet shows a very small Trolley Acc. To start four Avon engines simultaneously required a very much larger array of accumulators. However, the photo gives a good representation of the blue colour used on ground equipment at that period. Mike

Thanks for jogging my memory Selwyn. I agree that no maintenance was done on stand-by aircraft but they did have a pre-flight check every day which normally would have required access ladders. On reflection it was probably a simplified check as, to keep the number of people around the armed aircraft to a minimum, I had to do a couple of checks normally carried out by the radar guy. There was a piece of radar equipment on the shelf next to the batteries in the Valiant bomb bay which I had to check and I suppose I was one of the very few on the squadron who actually got to see those "stores". There was some sort of accommodation close to the QRA aircraft as I remember being there one Christmas day when we were permitted to have one small bottle of beer with our lunch. To get off the ground in four minutes the aircrew would not have arrived by bus but would have already been close to the aircraft or, more likely, already seated in it. Mike

You have chosen a difficult subject with very little documentation available. You will find a few carefully posed photos of V-bomber scrambles in which the unphotogenic stuff like access ladders will not be seen. Personal photos and taking notes were totally forbidden where nuclear weapons were concerned. A giraffe was a wheeled ladder with a small platform at the top. It could be angled to the desired height. A safety raiser was a platform with a larger surface which could be jacked up vertically. It could support a substantial weight but could not reach very high. The accumulators... When an aircraft was unpowered it required an external source of electricity for servicing and for starting the engines (I am writing of Valiants here.) This was normally a petrol motor driving a generator. A photo: http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o163/deMichu/scramble.jpg This was OK for normal usage but it required the pilot to wait a certain time in between starting engines and, if he was too eager, he would blow a fuse which would take a while to change. This was not ideal if you wanted four aircraft off the ground in a couple of minutes. A crew chief devised a system consisting of a trolley full of accumulators with the possibility of starting all four engines simultaneously while the aircrew were still strapping themselves in. Also, in the photo, you can see a cable crossing the undercarriage door and plugged into the fuselage next to the external power supply. This is possibly the land-line from the Bomber Controller or, perhaps, the communication link to the crew chief. Sorry, I don't remember! This is not of much help in making a model but, perhaps, of interest. Mike

I would stay away. http://s362974870.onlinehome.us/forums/air...233450&st=0 There have been similar complaints posted on HyperScale. Mike

A couple of simple drawings which may be of help. They are from the AP and the Pilots' Notes. I think that the two plugs in the Mach 2 kit are to correct errors in the kit and that the extension to the B-2 fuselage was in front of the wings. http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o163/de...acteristics.jpg http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o163/de...u/ValiantB2.jpg Mike

To add to what The General wrote: When in the RAF I worked on shiny white Valiants. Occasionally we received a visitor from some unit which had High Speed Silver aircraft and we always referred to the arrival as the "grey Valiant" because that was what it looked like. We were unaware that it was supposed to be silver. A model in high gloss silver paint is just not going to look right. Mike

So I am a nit-picker but... Orange Putter was not an RWR (radar warning receiver) i.e. a passive device which receives radar emissions. It was a transmitter/receiver, a radar which picked up reflections from an aircraft. Did Valiant crews appreciate this? It must have been like a beacon mounted on the tail of the aircraft. Mike

The Valiant had a tail warning radar (Orange Putter) and this seems to be associated with the extended fuselage. If you look at the rear cover of Eric Morgan's book on the Valiant there are two photos which clearly show the long and short fuselages and the long fuselage has an unpainted tip which I assume is the dielectric cover for the radar. In my opinion the short fuselage has no radar. Mike

I think that Airfix chose to keep the model as simple as possible so as to keep the price reasonable. Even with the cockpit door open it is impossible to see anything apart from the rear of the seat closest to the door. What puzzles me is why they chose to offer separate elevators and ailerons. When the Valiant is parked these surfaces are locked in a neutral position. Mike

Hullo Joe, I can only find this : http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o163/de...k1bombaimer.jpg http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o163/de...mbaimertext.jpg Mike

The floor of the Valiant cockpit (at the level of the entrance) was of wood. Access to the visual bomb aiming position was via a hinged trap immediately below the steps leading up to the pilots' position. I think that I have some drawings somewhere and I shall try to dig them out. Mike

There is a lot of photos from "Life" magazine on the Internet which may help you with this project. Google - pogo plane source: life It is interesting to see how the seat rotated so that the pilot was not hanging head-down when the aircraft was vertical. Mike

I can't find Traffic Blue in my copy of BS381C and all the colours have three digit numbers. However, there is a French Blue No. 166 which is somewhat darker than I remember - but that was 50 years back. We usually referred to it as Ground Equipment Blue being unaware of the correct designation. Similarly, the occasional visiting Valiant in High Speed Silver we called a "grey" Valiant because that was what it looked like. It certainly did not look like silver to us at the time. Mike

There are hundreds of photos in this thread but pages 16 and 46 show some early F-14s. There are some good photos of the second prototype which may be of use. http://www.warbirdinformationexchange.org/...7&start=225 http://www.warbirdinformationexchange.org/...7&start=675 Mike

Selwyn, I worked on Valiant squadrons and can assure you that there were Blue Danube practice rounds. I saw them on several occasions. They had a rack mounted under the lower fins which carried three or four small flash and smoke bombs which had the same ballistic characteristics. This gave the armourers practice in loading the real thing, and the aircrew the experience of flying with a 10 000lb bomb and "dropping" it. I remember an occasion when there was an accident: a practice bomb slipped when it was being loaded, the fin struck the arm of an armourer and broke it. Blame had to be found and it was decided that the aircraft was not perfectly horizontal (plus or minus whatever the tolerance was) and afterwards it was not unusual to see the crew chief jumping up and down on a wing tip like a demented ape in order to lose a few seconds of arc to bring the aircraft back into the horizontal limits "according to the book". Later, when the Blue Danube went out of service, the practice bombs were dropped at a range in the Wash. Turquoise Blue No.102 - I can accept that. Mike

Enzo, I have a copy of BS 381C:1964 and I can only say that the Deep Saxe Blue chip doesn't look like the blue of those practice bombs or the Yellow Sun bomb in the photo which I posted. Perhaps I should see an ophthalmologist? When I get round to building that Airfix Valiant I think that I shall match the blue with the photos and not the colour chip. Mike

Thanks, Julien. That looks like a live bomb and what I am looking for is the correct colour blue which was used on the inert bombs which I used to see. This looks like the colour which I remember: In the meantime I have found this photo which appears to be the same colour used 50 years back: From what I have read, practice bombs are painted BS381C colour no. 113 Deep Saxe Blue but these photos show a lighter colour. Just what shade of blue is it? Mike

And, before anyone says the obvious, I know that it was blue . At least the inert bombs which I saw when in the RAF were blue. Practice bombs are apparently painted Deep Saxe Blue but, when I look at the BS381 colour chip, that colour is very much darker than I remember. I understand that a small colour chip on a white page is always going to look darker than 10 000 lb of the real thing in daylight and that memories from 50 years back are not going to be reliable. However, in Wynn's book, "RAF Nuclear Deterrent Forces", there is a colour photo of an inert Yellow Sun which is like the blue which I remember, lighter in colour than the trailer and that was a quite bright blue. Mike

It seems that the available drawings are none too reliable so here are some numbers which may be of help. http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o163/deMichu/Valiantfuselagestationsdiag.jpg http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o163/deMichu/Valianteqptlocdiag.jpg http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o163/deMichu/Valiantloadingdiagram.jpg Note, 10000lb "store" is a euphemism for the Blue Danube nuclear bomb Dimensions of components for packing: http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o163/deMichu/ValiantMk1Packingdimensions.jpg A couple of numbers gleaned from the AP. The bomb bay is between station 370 and 793. That includes the shelf at the front where the batteries, some fuses, radar gear and the window/chaff boxes are installed. The bomb bay doors are shorter. The ram air-intake on the left fuselage side behind the cockpit entrance is mounted between stations 341 and 350. Note - these are the mounting points and not the front and rear edges of the scoop. Caruana's drawings are definitely wrong with respect to this feature as shown by both these numbers and photographs. The intake (which supplies cooling air to equipment in the organ loft) does not protrude in front of the wing leading edge. I do not bother to put details into models which are going to be invisible once assembled. Even with the cockpit door open there is not much to see, but perhaps it it is just possible to glimpse the seat closest to the door, which, at an early date was slightly different to the others in that it had parachute static lines mounted on the back. Later, the static lines were incorporated into the parachute pack. The three rearward-facing guys did not have ejection seats and, after jettisoning the cabin door, an "eyelid" operated by elastic cord (!) would flip out and hopefully reduce the blast of air so that they could curl up into a ball and roll out of the aircraft. If that sounds dodgy, how about evacuating a Vulcan with the nose wheel extended? http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o163/de...antcrewseat.jpg http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o163/de...nallersseat.jpg The pilots had ejection seats. http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o163/de...antMk3Aseat.jpg The cabin floor was made of wood and I remember it as black turned to a dusty grey. My memory (and this is going back 50 years) is of a cabin painted in a dull green, the sort of green associated with an office desk, and not a bright apple green. However, something very clear in my mind is that the UHF antenna - part 18D in the Airfix kit- had the horizontal rod painted bright yellow. I was given a pot of paint and a brush and was told to paint it. I found a giraffe, an adjustable wheeled ladder with a platform, and part way through my emulation of Michelangelo the mobile NAAFI arrived. When I returned I found that the wind had blown over my pot of paint and that there were yellow splashes over the nose of the aircraft. A good photo of the Blue Danube and some drawings can be found on this site- http://nuclear-weapons.info/vw.htm Although the drawings are of the Violet Club, the case is the same as that of the Blue Danube. On the subject of Blue Danube - can anyone tell me the correct colour. And before you shout, "blue!", I know that . At least the inert, concrete bombs which I saw were blue. According to something I found on the Internet, RAF practice bombs were Deep Saxe Blue which seems to me to be very dark. I understand that a small colour chip in a book will always look darker than a large surface in sunlight but in Wynn's book, "RAF Nuclear Deterrent Forces", there is a colour photo of an inert Yellow Sun which is more like the blue which I remember seeing. I am still trying to navigate my way around this site and it was by chance that I found the finished model in another section. Not only is that an excellent model but it is of a rather different Valiant. Marvelous work, Melchie! Mike

Ref. wing chord. I don't know where you measure it but probably the wing leading and trailing edges are extended to the fuselage centre line and that is defined as "root". I am not too certain how to post images on this site but let's see if this works. It's from the AP. Mike

Melchie, I have been following your work on the Airfix Valiant with great interest. I used to work on Valiants when I was in the RAF, but that was 50 years back so don't expect me to remember all the details! You just did not take notes in the vicinity of nuclear weapons unless you wanted a rapid and unpleasant end to your career in the Air Force. Your first photo of the front undercarriage bay is apparently looking up into the forward equipment bay, usually referred to as the "organ loft". There is an interesting account here: http://www.tonycunnane.co.uk/montral1.html When I first saw photos of the Airfix kit I was struck by the very prominent V-shaped rear face of the nosewheel undercarriage bay and, now that I have just received the kit, I also see that Airfix places a strut over the access to the organ loft. I remember a flat surface and at the left of your photo you can see the steps leading up to the loft. Memory also tells me (incorrectly?) that there was a trap door covering the equipment bay. Richard Caruana makes so many drawings that it is not possible for them to have been thoroughly researched. He is an excellent draughtsman and artist, has designed Maltese postage stamps and parts of Luqa airport (but I don't hold him responsible for the absence of lavatory seats at that airport!) It is a pity that Airfix relied so much on his work when there is a Valiant in a British museum.