Flying a council house from the upstairs loo

[Wez]

1 minute ago, Tramatoa said:

Aerial J - the towel rail

That would be linked to the DECTRAC for the Decca Navigator, its removal on XT604 links in with the earlier photo with the GPS aerial.

[Tramatoa]

I’ll not post the HF as everyone knows what that is. 

Got to go as work calls (currently in a land far, far away). Wez you are a legend, thanks for the banter and the expert input, made an otherwise dull couple of hours fly by 👍

Edited December 1, 2018 by Tramatoa

[Wez]

8 minutes ago, Tramatoa said:

thanks for the banter and the expert input, made an otherwise dull couple of hours fly by 👍

You're welcome, thanks for taking the time to post these pictures.

[huvut76g7gbbui7]

On one Leuchars 'Walter' det to Connell the two aerials on the nose were painted white.

The groundcrew thought that it was appropriate because both of us sitting upstairs wore specs.

I have no photo as it rained during the lifeboat exercise.

[Tramatoa]

Another day in The Land of Far, Far Away watching the snow fall so let’s go for a wander round the cockpit of XT604 for a look at a few points of note courtesy of nabe3 again.

Now this isn’t something you will ever see on ECAM. These are the engine gauges and you will note that they have been turned so that when the t’s & p’s are all normal everything points up. They also have green bands and red limit markers applied. Tricky to replicate but very noticeable.

[Tramatoa]

This is the Captain’s side of the office and between the rudder pedals we find the windscreen wiper motor which sat in a little drip tray and was replenished by removing a little cap from the rear (it forms the lower point of a triangle with two studs on this photo) and dripping in OM15 with an oil can. Above it is the lever for the tail wheel castor/locked position, presumably in and flush being locked for flight. To the right of this is the rudder pedal adjuster knob and to the left the parking brake with its very noticeable spring.

[Tramatoa]

This is the Master Arm Switch behind the Captain’s right ear, as previously mentioned a double throw (?) type. Still not found a photo of this from outside looking in but i’m pretty sure in was red and white stripes - over to you Scimitar.......

[Tramatoa]

This isn’t, I must confess, something I was ever allowed to play with (I can imagine what our Instie would have to say about a Heavy messing about with his kit) but I’m pretty sure it is the Autopilot Switching Panel and I was once told it came out of a Lincoln bomber.

I do dimly remember once trying to get to the bottom of one of those incredibly irritating snags which just wouldn’t go away where there was a heavy jump when they switched channels in and out. I was reluctantly strapped in so the Boss (who will forever be Mike Faulkner in my sad old head) tried every conceivable combination of Primaries, Secondaries and god alone knows what else to get to the bottom of the problem. As fascinating as this may have been to him I have to admit it had a more limited appeal to me. If you ever read this Boss, thanks for coming on my Stag do, you will never know what a lasting impression it had on me that you not only bothered but that you got as wrecked as the rest of us. 

[Tramatoa]

While we are off at a tangent I discovered these at Caernarfon Air Museum earlier this year (I suppose it could be argued they weren’t lost in the first place). They used to greet you every morning in the foyer at C Flt 22 Sqn but were removed when SAR went civvie and, I was informed, were not deemed appropriate for display in the new facility so ended up being given to the museum. I hope by now they have found a wall to screw them to as I wasn’t overly happy to see them on the floor but it’s that sort of a place, very informal and I’m sure they would not intend to upset us old boys. If you get a chance please make the effort to go, it’s a bit remote but they clearly try very hard on a limited budget. It’s worth reading ‘The Tale of Tabun’ by Roy Sloane before going though as they have a real Tabun shell on display (I don’t think they realise it’s significance, I had to dust it off when I finally found it before photographing it!!!). There’s even a bit of the R101 in there!

At this point I should add that there are some other, later plaques on display but the subject matter is somewhat uncouth and unsuitable for readers of this thread. I’m sure those of you who were unlucky enough to only experience this somewhat chavvy era will understand (royalty included).

[huvut76g7gbbui7]

@Tramatoa   Is Len Mills still on the go?

If so wonder if he remembers the Argyll Hotel in Lochgilphead in which we were forced to stay having been unable to get back to Oban because of weather.

The following morning Nick Stillwell got a 'kill' on departure.

A very nice park bench to firewood in about five seconds.

[bobsyouruncle]

Quote

One of the reasons I came onto the forum in the first place was that I had been unable to find any photos of a Wet Fit installation or SAR Role Kit and all the aircraft I had found either in real life or online did not have this fitted (presumably its not good for long term storage because it traps moisture). 

 

I can't believe this thread was here all the time while I've been floundering in the 'modern' section. 

I was after the same thing and had dug out a few old photos from the cupboards which are here, but I hadn't got anything looking aft so I'm thrilled to find your photo on page 8.

Being at Valley, we (MRT) worked mainly with 'C' Flight. I'd been marvelling at Hendie's build, but my mind remembered PVC type sheeting everywhere on the SAR machines and I thought half the seats were folded away (to make room to winch a stretcher in).

 

Anyway, here are some bits of the front end:-

 

This was in XR507, then of 'D' flight, Leconfield and was working around the Kinder plateau, Peak District, Derbys.

 

Same machine, looking slightly more to the left. Looks like they hung a 'bespoke SAR type' canvas with built-in pouches on the seat frame?

 

Same machine at Foxhouse, near Sheffield.

 

Winching in to it.

 

 

This was a Valley 'C' Flight machine. We were out trying to get kit back from a rescue the previous night on the Glyders (Glyder Fawr in picture). The Entonox and Oxygen bags are on the left and are as I remember them.

 

Just a little more to the left showing the fire extinguisher, same as above.

 

 

Over Cwm Cneifion with Gribin ridge.

 

Cheers Bob.

 

[huvut76g7gbbui7]

Here's a nice pic of XR588 at Leuchars in 1981.

and an interesting combination of colours in this one

[Wez]

8 hours ago, Scimitar said:

and an interesting combination of colours in this one

Looks like SAR went shopping at SH to me!

 

Robbed intake and RH undercarriage from an SH cab.

[AndyBunney]

19 hours ago, Tramatoa said:

 

Geoff Clarke was our Flight Commander at D Flt Leconfield.

 

[AndyBunney]

On 11/30/2018 at 10:56 AM, Scimitar said:

Don't you dare! 

Easy fix for the windows.

Not so easy fix for short fuselage (there is a conversion from Rotorcraft?)

Tail rotor wrong way too.

PM me if you need drawings.

As HC2s are rare as hens teeth in 1/72 the HU5 will do for now. I may replace it with an HC2 if I ever find one. Offering my fuselage up to plans and photos of HC2s I don't see any visible difference in the cone section and actually the overall length appears to be longer than it should be when scaled up. Set on a Diorama it will look fine. I will probably try to correct the tailrotor blunder though!

[bobsyouruncle]

Some more photos dug out from the filing box in the loft:-

By the way, I wasn't sure of the rules regarding putting peoples faces on here (still not sure). I saw that you'd blanked out your mans face in the rear part of the cab (Tramatoa), so thought I'd have to do the same in mine.

Can you please let me know if it's otherwise as this next one looks a bit silly like this and I'd gladly reveal (some are on facebook, but not all).

Dohh!, can you guess which one's me?! Doesn't feel right with my team-mates covered up like this, but as I said, unsure of the rules.

This was the MRT at Valley around 1988 I think, with XV729 and crew.

The Wessex pilot stood to the left of me (looking at the pic) used to say "Of course they're not supposed to fly......it's only willpower keeps them up there".

 

 

XV729 again. This time dropping us near the summit of Snowdon late on a summer evening. Apologies for the 'Supasnaps' printing lines across the image(!).

 

 

and XV729 again. Winching in the forest, just north of Betws-y-Coed.

 

Winching demo (honest).

 

Back to the Leconfield machine over the Peak district, just to show the lining around the door frame.

 

 

These next shots were set up for a RAF photographer, for some PR, but someone grabbed my camera and took these too.

I was supposed to be playing the injured walker/climber and the other guy's pretending to give me some first aid. A bit light on the injuries make-up, just some blusher and lippy for me.

XT602 doesn't look to have an intake guard on here in these?

 

Acting.

 

I'm in the Pete Bell stretcher, which was the type we used for cliff rescues, (as opposed to the SAR flight 'Neil Robertson' type, which was slung under the ceiling in the cab in Tramatoa's page 8 photo).

Rigged for winching with four braided nylon rope slings attached to a central karabiner. Out of shot to the left, he's holding a day/night smoke wind direction indicator flare.

My compact Olympus AF10 didn't have a shutter speed dial, so unfortunately you've got frozen rotor blades.

 

The winchie attaching the cable (feels a little precarious and prone to snagging as the hook nudges the chopper underside before coming up to the door (one reason why the step was removed on most of the ones

we had?).

 

 

'Is he any trouble?...We can take him up to 3000' and drop him if you like?'.

 

Tramatoa, I recognised John Ardley's name from the 1985 slate in your pic. You probably know a few of the names that we did around the time I'm guessing?

Phil Windsor, Tony Dewhurst, Steve Murkin, Ken Tucker, Tim Josephy, Mullan and wasn't there a German pilot called 'Bernie'?

 

Cheers, Bob.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 3, 2018 by bobsyouruncle
Typos

[Tramatoa]

Thanks for taking the time to dig those out Bob, great to see Walter in action.

I think the blanks in your list of names are John Mullan and Bernie Neuen (not sure if that’s spelt correctly). Both decent chaps. Bernie I seem to recall said something about following in his father’s footsteps as we flew over London and out over the Thames Barrage. It’s a long time ago though and the tale may have changed slightly over the years.

[bobsyouruncle]

Quote

Thanks for taking the time to dig those out Bob, great to see Walter in action.

I think the blanks in your list of names are John Mullan and Bernie Neuen (not sure if that’s spelt correctly). Both decent chaps. Bernie I seem to recall said something about following in his father’s footsteps as we flew over London and out over the Thames Barrage. It’s a long time ago though and the tale may have changed slightly over the years.

 

No problem at all. I'll be attempting to model XV729 so am very interested in the detailed photos put up here and great to see she's still flying. 

Thanks also for filling in the blanks in the names for me, sounds right. 

You might be able to help me with something else too:-

I was picked up by one of your machines once, at about 4pm, from outside our section to go to a job on Mickledore, (between Scafell and Scafell Pike) - to assist the winchman getting a casualty into the stretcher (he had quite a few injuries).

Anyway they left me there on the hill, as they might have had to go to Newcastle rather than Whitehaven and didn't have enough fuel if that was the case. 

In the event they came back for me, as I was walking down to Wasdale, after dropping the cas at Whitehaven. We then refuelled at Whitehaven.

Now this next bit is the thing:-...whilst on the ground, the pilot said that something about something 'having popped out'? and mentioning a 'dolls eye'? 

He then climbed up and started hitting something on the rotor head with a hammer(!).

I still don't know to this day if this was just a wind-up for my benefit, or genuine?

Any thoughts?

 

Cheers Bob.

 

P.S. Referring back to the VHF aerials conversation, in case of interest, for our part we had our own VHF RAF Mountain Rescue frequency and another VHF frequency for Civilian Mountain Rescue teams and I think the choppers mainly used the civvie one, but could use ours too (don't know if they only had one set or could listen out on both frequencies?). We also had the HF for direct comms with Edinburgh Rescue Coordination Centre. 

Edited December 3, 2018 by bobsyouruncle
Added radio info

[huvut76g7gbbui7]

30 minutes ago, bobsyouruncle said:

He then climbed up and started hitting something on the rotor head with a hammer(!).

The blade integrity meter ?

The rotor blades were filled with nitrogen (?) and the BIM was normally white. If there was a crack in the blade the nitrogen leaked out and the BIM went black. It was a simple device with a two coloured card on a spring basically.

You were then limited on how long you could fly.

Never had that on a Wessex but had to do a blade change on a Sea King on the shinty pitch at Oban.

Somebody with more knowledge will be along shortly.

[huvut76g7gbbui7]

A close up of XR497 on 6/5/80, showing some useful detail.

Taken from the Oban 'Brede' class lifeboat  with which we were exercising in the Sound of Mull.

 

[huvut76g7gbbui7]

I finally found the drawings I had copied from the AP about 30 years ago.

Should be enough detail to even keep @hendie happy 

 

[huvut76g7gbbui7]

A couple scanned from damaged photos showing more underside detail.

 

[Tramatoa]

Bob,

The only dolls eye  type of indicators I can think of would likely relate to the Intake Anti-icing on the left side of the centre console. I think this is a red herring.

The most likely answer to your scenario would be one of the droop stops didn’t go in during shutdown. You would occasionally have this happen and you would give him the signal to speed the head up again and give things a stir before trying again. I also heard of people using a broom handle to try and coax them in but I never saw this tried, the former always worked. If the conditions were still you could shut down with one stuck without too much drama.

Now if we factor in that you would want to have this back in before attempting to start up again, the fact that it is almost unheard of for one of the growbags to climb up on the platform and their almost total lack of even the most basic, common sense engineering practices this is where I would place my bet. I don’t think we ever let them have access to a hammer as they would be at serious risk of damaging something important. The only thing that was available to them would be the fire axe (handy for opening oil cans but not much else) and that really wouldn’t be appropriate. The way a droop stop was put back in was to climb up on top of the MF40/Landrover or risk life and limb on the stabiliser then grip the blade tip and wang it up and down like a giant wobble board until it popped back. A very rare occurrence fortunately.

[hendie]

37 minutes ago, Tramatoa said:

The most likely answer to your scenario would be one of the droop stops didn’t go in during shutdown.

 

I agree.  The only thing I can imagine up there being hit with a hammer is the droop stop.  (or the blade fold pins).    But if the droop stop hadn't gone in and the blades were stopped....?

 

 

Not even a driver would be insane enough to try hitting the BIM with a hammer.  (Would they?)

 

 

40 minutes ago, Tramatoa said:

or risk life and limb on the stabiliser

 

even more fun when you're up on the trans deck trying to trace an oil leak in there when the blades are turning

[huvut76g7gbbui7]

1 hour ago, hendie said:

Not even a driver would be insane enough to try hitting the BIM with a hammer.  (Would they?)

I mentioned that on the premise that @bobsyouruncle was being wound up and the only thing up there that could vaguely be described as a 'dolls eye' is the BIM.

I can't see anyone hitting that for real though.

Equally so there are easier wind ups.

 

1 hour ago, hendie said:

But if the droop stop hadn't gone in and the blades were stopped....?

Interesting read and photos of a droop stop failure on a couple of Chinooks in here:

http://www.chinook-helicopter.com/maintenance/issues/droop_stops/droop_stop.htm

 

2 hours ago, Tramatoa said:

If the conditions were still you could shut down with one stuck without too much drama.

I don't know so I ask this.

Surely if the stop didn't do its job the blade would drop on to the fuselage?

Could ,if it was at very low revs, be caught with the rotor brake so the offending blade didn't hit ?

 

The scenario that Bob gives suggests that everything had been shut down and it was only after refuelling that this happened.

 

Can a droop stop fail after the rotor has stopped? (I can't see how it could pop back up)