Flying a council house from the upstairs loo

[Meatbox8]

On 11/10/2018 at 4:41 PM, Tramatoa said:

Ah, a moments peace at last, where was I? Sat on a sandbag with lights swinging.....

The problem with Old Walter, as I’ve found out on three occasions this summer, is that if you either take the blades off or go to the bother of folding them (very rarely if ever done on SAR detached flights, and occasionally at SARTU during my time) you can squeeze the beast into a very tight corner, making it very difficult to get around. The one at Cosford is dangling it’s Dunlops in a very odd way, the only aircraft in that part of the museum to be so displayed.  The last time I was there some of the volunteers were actually working on the engines using access stands which must be a first! The one at Newark, similarly, is inaccessible on the left hand side, which is a pity. As SH cabs go it’s in really good nick, all credit to the museum staff. I only had about half an hour, and in view of the kindness I had been shown I didn’t want to put anyone out so I had a good look in the RH electrical bay, cabin and right hand side and left it at that. Photos to follow if I can suss out how to load them.

Please note that the aircraft does not have its original nose, the one fitted is off a Shawbury cab.

Pip pip,

Tramatoa

 

It doesn't sound like it's in your area but Bournemouth air museum, just opposite Bournemouth airport, has and yellow one that you can chamber all over and sit in.

[Tramatoa]

Hello Meatbox8, and thanks for taking the time to post. 

The Wessex you have had a clamber over is a bit of an oddity, perhaps a ‘yellow herring’ in more than one sense. There are a couple of ex-72 Sqn SH Wessex HC2s which have been mentioned and pictured earlier on the thread. These should by rights be in some shade of green but at some point have been sprayed yellow. To most they look like what they have been painted to represent but on closer inspection they have lots of lumps and bumps which shouldn’t be there. A case of ‘close but no cigar’ perhaps. Then there is the Wessex at Bournemouth........

This poor old budgie is an ex-RN ASW aircraft which some buffoon has chosen to spray yellow. Note the emphasis there, it’s not the poor old aircraft which is to blame but the numpty who chose to do this to it. I think the aircraft has found a home where it is looked after and I’m sure it has and continues to bring a lot of pleasure to a lot of people. To be fair to the museum they are totally honest about its provenance and its probably not economically viable to strip it and return it to its proper colour scheme.

The problem is that if you say something is true often enough there’s always someone who will believe you.........

[Tramatoa]

This morning I thought I’d revisit the area behind John Mullan’s Bone Dome in post #321. 

I had found a picture of this on largescaleplanes.com in the walk round section but I didn’t want to post it without seeking permission and joining another forum was something I couldn’t face. Some good can out of it because I’ve found someone who has produced a sheet of decals for the FLY kit and much to my surprise he still has a few spare. 

Anyway to return to today’s conundrum we have NABE3 to thank for a photo which was under my nose all along.

As you can see the box has been missing for some time. If anyone has an idea what should be at this location I’d be grateful for any pointers

Thanks,

T

[Wez]

26 minutes ago, Tramatoa said:

If anyone has an idea what should be at this location I’d be grateful for any pointers

At a guess, it looks like an ideal location for the intercom Station Box but not being a Wessex man I don't know for sure.

[hendie]

I remember a box with a few switches that was on a long cable.  Stowage point for that?

Was the box a playstation controller for the loadie to point the nitesun at objects of interest?

or perhaps something to do with the winch when the loadie was hanging out of the door?

 

though looking at post 321 there appears to be more switches than would be necessary for either of those operations

[Wez]

1 hour ago, hendie said:

Was the box a playstation controller for the loadie to point the nitesun at objects of interest?

Pretty sure the Nitesun CU was black, direction control was achieved using a red coolie hat style knob and the box was about half the size of the stowage/mount shown, unless of course Walters had a different box.

 

Admittedly after looking at Post 321 I'm none the wiser.

Edited March 28, 2019 by Wez

[Tramatoa]

Now obviously I’m an ex-splitty and therefore not to be taken seriously where Comms are concerned, but isn’t HF normally kept in a separate box? I have a recollection of crossing the Channel once with the crew being relayed the Calcutta Cup score over HF by both Edinburgh Rescue and Plymouth Rescue depending on who was winning. I also seem to recall the Nav normally lived downstairs unless they were going somewhere where proper navigation was required and they would occasionally go all serious while making a call to the outside world. Am I right in thinking that the box on the transmission tunnel wouldn’t cover HF frequencies?

 

Edited March 28, 2019 by Tramatoa

[Tramatoa]

Well I find myself washed up like so much flotsam in a place charmingly known as Hogtown although one airport hotel room does look very much like another and only the accents of the maids shouting at each other in the corridor varies. I certainly have yet to see any hogs around the place......

With an hour to kill I thought we’d have a look at the area below that box I’ve been obsessing about recently. The forward right hand seat was an odd affair on the Wessex, in its off the shelf form it had provision for a second seat piggy backed (hog reference there) on to it and you would occasionally see this extra structure folded underneath it. In my recollection this excess bit was normally discretely removed and disposed of and I can’t ever remember it being used in anger, even when we took the Flight football team for a day out at Innsworth.

 

This image is from XT604 and shows the second seat frame in its intended config. As I said earlier, I can’t ever recall this being used most likely because it would have restricted access through the doorway. The yellow circular pads were, as I remember, steel with a non slip rubber bonded to the base. The connector on the bottom of the leg worked by pulling up the collar to grip the foot, but wasn’t very secure and we just pushed them under and let the Winchie’s backside do the rest. 

In this second snap from Donny you can get a clearer impression of just how much of the seat frame blocks the doorway with the seat as Westland intended.

 

[Tramatoa]

And here’s another thing......

Sorry for reappearing so quickly!

It occurred to me that you can see a lot of yellow sealant on the hyd couplings on XT604, possibly oversealing bonding leads. I recall two types of sealant we used, ‘Pollycast’, a two part yellow potting compound which was a pain in the bum to clean off your hands, requiring the use of ‘Tollers’ from a glass bottle, and ‘JC5a’ a yellow Zinc Chromate jointing compound which only semi set and has been subsequently purged from our lives by the H&S police. Of course there was Hylomar but that was a Sooty thing. All these fondly remembered chemicals are probably why so many of the generation of engineers a bit older than me have dropped off the perch. Fingers crossed for those of us who caught the tail end of this era.

Pip pip,

Tramatoa

[perdu]

I'm not sure why the seat support rail on the port side wall is suspended in free air here but it seems I have XT604s oddball seat in the right place on my old Frog kit

Phew

 

I'm glad you keep adding to this piece Tramatoa, one of my many guilty pleasures 

Keeping up with Walter

[AndyBunney]

On 4/7/2019 at 9:36 PM, Tramatoa said:

And here’s another thing......

Sorry for reappearing so quickly!

It occurred to me that you can see a lot of yellow sealant on the hyd couplings on XT604, possibly oversealing bonding leads. I recall two types of sealant we used, ‘Pollycast’, a two part yellow potting compound which was a pain in the bum to clean off your hands, requiring the use of ‘Tollers’ from a glass bottle, and ‘JC5a’ a yellow Zinc Chromate jointing compound which only semi set and has been subsequently purged from our lives by the H&S police. Of course there was Hylomar but that was a Sooty thing. All these fondly remembered chemicals are probably why so many of the generation of engineers a bit older than me have dropped off the perch. Fingers crossed for those of us who caught the tail end of this era.

Pip pip,

Tramatoa

The yellow zinc chromate was affectionately known as "Yak poo-poo" if i remember rightly. I still have a tin of it somewhere! (Rude word police won't let me use the actual word but you know what I mean wink wink)

Edited April 9, 2019 by AndyBunney

[Tramatoa]

I remember the term well. On the Wessex Minor team I was inflicted on for three months at Finningley someone would mix a pot of it up in the morning and it would be shared round for the day. Lord alone knows what they must feed Yaks with. There used to be a bench in the middle of the bay with half a Wessex worth of gash structure hidden underneath it. 

One thing it was used for was to ‘walnut whip’ the Main Rotor Gearbox bracing strut attachment bolts at the four corners of the Transmission Platform. These were for some reason wirelocked with ‘coathanger wire’ which was the only place I remember this being used.

Top bunch of lads, Dave Walls and his team. 

Edited April 10, 2019 by Tramatoa

[Tramatoa]

Just a quick update this morning which will have very little to do with yellow helicopters but you may find entertaining.

On returning from Canada I found myself deposited in the Czech Republic for a couple of days having missed my flight out by three hours. This was as a result of one of our small feathered friends deciding to end it all in our No 1 Engine on the west coast of the Emerald Isle which pushed everything to the right by four hours. Tweety’s loss was my gain and as I’m a cup half full sort of bloke I did my best to squeeze as much out of this unexpected stopover as possible. I managed a trip to the Tatra Technical Museum, which was next to the hotel and was very well done. There are cars and lorries dating from the early 1900s through to the 1990s (think the Czech equivalent of the Leyland truck museum but with added cars) and a side exhibition all about Emil Zatopek. From an aviation perspective there is a Tatra 131 hanging from the ceiling in the main hall, basically a license built Bucker Jungmann, again in pristine condition and I’ll post the rest of the pictures I took in due course.

They also have a selection of licence built light aircraft engines and props and a Ju88 prop with reduction gear. I’m not really into cars and lorries but if you are this is well worth a visit.

On the way back to the airport we passed a memorial at Příbor with a MIG15 on display next to it. Sadly the taxi driver had little English and I had no Czech whatsoever but my excited flapping did result in him slowing down sufficiently for me to take a snap. 

Now I’m told by my friend Peter that the Czechs built these in Prague at the Aero factory at Odolena Voda (LKVO) and that the monument is for the Czech pilots of WW2 with three types of pilot‘s wings: Russian left, RAF centre and pre-war Czech airforce on the right. 

Not wishing to get into too much work related stuff I found myself at a loss for something to do on the second afternoon waiting for the Ryanair to rock up. The modelling gods were again smiling on me as stuck in the corner of the hangar was this little beauty, again I’ll share the pictures I took on a separate thread in due course. I asked politely if anyone would object to me taking a bunch of photos and was told to help myself. I didn’t manage to get inside (I wasn’t convinced the old chap pottering round it believed the Cold War was over and he shut the door and took away the handle while I was taking pictures of the starboard side) and let’s be honest I’ve not entirely forgiven them for the time I spent sweating my cods off in an NBC suit either so no hard feelings 🙄.  For the uninitiated I’m told this is a Turbolet L-410 UVP.

Lastly, and on a more pertinent note, my journey home took me past East Midlands where I had planned (connived?) a lunch break. I know they don’t open on a Friday but I’d hoped that the stars might align and there would be someone there dusting the Vulcan or suchlike. Imagine my frustration when I arrived to find the place shut up; you will be able to see the teeth marks on the barrier for months! So in summary I’ve been half way round the globe, met some new friends, seen some things which I’m sure 99.9999% of people will never have the privilege of seeing and found a couple of aircraft types I’d never heard of, I’m home in one piece but XT604 still eludes me. You have to laugh.........

[bobsyouruncle]

Went to see XT604 myself yesterday as it was the first weekend of the year that the aero park was open. Anyway there she was...........gone!

She’s been moved inside the hangar you can’t get a look inside apparently because  she had some ‘magnesium panels’ (?), which didn’t do well outside. In for a re-furb and re-paint according to the chap behind the canteen/shop counter.

Edited April 22, 2019 by bobsyouruncle
predictive text error

[Tramatoa]

To be honest when I rang last year I was told it was inside but I’d assumed this was a temporary arrangement as space must be at a premium.

Poor old Walter was always prone to a bit of random mag alloy corrosion which sometimes would manifest itself after a weekend sat idle in the shed. We occasionally pitched up on Monday morning to find a large blister in the paint which when probed would be full of what we later called ‘Connie gold’ in civvy street. 

On one occasion we found a large crack in the tail cone of the first standby when the other aircraft was already in bits. The requirement to be airborne in less than one hour after dark was always the driver so we set to with what we had to hand; a hand painted ‘No Smoking’ sign made from roughly the required gauge of ally sheet and a handful of Avdels. In the resultant flap I had a neat 3.2mm hole drilled through my thumb by the legendary RPS, who refused to come out of the tailcone to face the music. How we laughed at the Medical Centre when the ruthless Bella Emberg sized sweetheart of a Duty Medic gripped the swarf shaped piece of gristle sticking out of the hole and neatly pulled it off! I thought she could at least have tried to stick it back in the *#%!!? crater!!!

I still have a white spot to prove it’s true and the moral of the story is always use a hammer handle or block of wood because one man’s left is another man’s right ........

Edited April 22, 2019 by Tramatoa

[Tramatoa]

Now as those of you who have been paying attention will realise Thing 1 has inexplicably developed a desire to aviate whilst at Uni and I have been doing my best to give her a few pointers to being a better budgie. To be honest it’s been great to have someone who is genuinely interested in looking at why stuff happens   and it’s also allowed me to do some digging for this thread.

After Bobsyouruncle’s post it seemed that XT604 is out of reach for the immediate future so last Tuesday we took a lunch break at Newark Air Museum on the way back to the East Midlands. Now it could be argued that Newark isn’t strictly ‘on the way’ but I’m blaming a combination of parallax error and an out of date TomTom and that’s an end to it. 

We had a good look round and hats off to all at Newark they have a great set up with some really interesting aircraft types which are displayed in such a way that you can have a good mooch round without anyone frowning. Also nice to see an ongoing program of maintenance and a group of enthusiastic volunteers who are happy to chat. Well worth a visit and to be honest I could have easily filled a day there and not run out of things to look at. 

The secondary reason for the visit (ok, ok I may not have been entirely honest about my motivation for going there......) was to have a look at the Transmission Platform on XV728 and after a short H&S briefing I was allowed to scramble up there for the first time since 1992. I’m not sure either the staff or Thing 1 were expecting this but let me tell you IT FELT BLOODY MARVELLOUS!!!!!!!! I spent a happy ten minutes photographing everything and returned to terra firma in one piece and the only complaints were from the resident spiders. No names, no pack drill but if you read this a thousand thanks for humouring me, short of taking me up to do a rotor track and balance you could not have made me happier 👍

I’m a bit pushed for time but I’ve a ruck of material to discuss which I’ll start working on over the next few days. 

Pip pip,

Tramatoa

[perdu]

To some that might have seemed a bizarre thing to put on your bucket list

To me?

Eminently sensible and I hope we can benefit from your trip up high

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Tramatoa]

Thanks for the positive feedback and apologies for the delay in posting. What I thought would be a quiet week flew by. 

 

The first thing I noticed while climbing up the side of XV728 was the internals of the winch. For simplicity I’ll refer to this as an SH winch and the 300’ unit on the yellow Wessex as a SAR winch. 

 

 

This particular example is as modelled by Hendie on his Crab Cab masterwork and I suspect it has a 100’ cable but don’t quote me. Internally its layout is similar to the SAR winch but there are a couple of notable differences. I’m pretty sure the drum on the SAR winch was anodised and this unit has clearly corroded so you would suspect it never had a surface treatment applied. What I’ll call the feed roller here is grooved steel, again corroded, whereas the SAR winch had a cross cut roller in bright chrome. I suspect this was because the 300’ winch needed to make several passes across the drum during a winching cycle and this winch can fit it’s cable onto the drum in one layer. The feed roller would drive the bellmouth housing across the drum while winching in or out. I’m pretty sure this is smaller here and I remember ours being stainless steel. Mounted on this are the cable cutter carts and their wiring loom in its plastic conduit. Further up inside the case you can see the pinch roller, here also bearing grooved marks from contact with the cable. On the SAR winch this was always pristine and our last act during a winch wash would wipe excess PX24 off this to stop the rubber perishing. Birdcaging was rare but you would sometimes be presented with a cabin full of hand hauled cable or a miswind on the drum which was not something we would attempt to fix, it was a straight swap out. There was a single occurrence of someone firing the cable cutter during my time, as a result of lack of concentration during a SACRU function. Legend had the perpetrator stating he couldn’t understand what the fuss was about as he’d only cut a couple of inches off the end.

[Tramatoa]

Today we have the detail of the right hand access door for the transmission deck, with the winch panel open. You can clearly see the piano hinge is in two parts with the bracket for the winch frame sway braces in the middle. The inner skin appears to be fixed in place with blind rivets, probably Avdels, and finished with a dark sea grey non-slip coating. 

Hinge details for the winch door with the Astra Cinema to the rear. I was in the cinema at Halton watching The Killing Fields and when we came out we heard poor old Tommy Cooper had taken his last bow live on stage at Her Majesties.  Funny how some things stick in the mind isn’t it?

And the rear of the platform with the bracing cable. I’d not noticed the small hinge bracket at the aft end before but I suppose it makes sense when you see the curvature at this point. To the right of my foot is the aforementioned bracket for the winch frame braces. I had forgotten how many doublers there were on the inside of these doors and they are really noticeable when you look at this angle. 

Pip pip,

Tramatoa

[hendie]

ah.... such nostalgia

[Tramatoa]

Before starting on the dog’s breakfast that is the trans deck I thought we would have a look at a couple of things which I spotted on the way up that seem to be overlooked.

Firstly this was new to me, and certainly wasn’t fitted in my time. I’ve not come across any incidents where one of the transmission platform doors has opened in flight but you would assume that is why this mod appeared. Operation is straightforward, just pull out the pip pin and rotate through 90 degrees then open the door as normal. 

[Tramatoa]

Next up the four sections of grille surrounding the upper part of the MRGB. Even I’m struggling to come up with some exciting facts about these..........

 

 

 

[Wez]

On 03/05/2019 at 08:37, Tramatoa said:

 

 

 

This particular example is as modelled by Hendie on his Crab Cab masterwork and I suspect it has a 100’ cable but don’t quote me. Internally its layout is similar to the SAR winch but there are a couple of notable differences. I’m pretty sure the drum on the SAR winch was anodised and this unit has clearly corroded so you would suspect it never had a surface treatment applied.

 

Weren't all the winches controlled by the same PT?  I wouldn't be surprised if they were maintained in the same bay, still you SAR boys did things in a very peculiar way...

...are we not just seeing the signs of neglect here?

[perdu]

Exciting fact

 

By looking at the photos I can see and relate to that weird mesh shape

 

And make out which gubbinses are visible down in there

 

Thanks for all these

 

Looks like somebody should be attacking the rust inside the winch screw thingy

 

Where did I put that emery cloth?

[Pete in Lincs]

On 5/7/2019 at 3:36 PM, Tramatoa said:

Even I’m struggling to come up with some exciting facts about these..........

How about the fact that they were painted green when they were unwrapped from new?

Now we can have a long discussion on which shade of green they were.