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Yellow tips and black blades on props - what date from?


rossm

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I'm in the process of finishing my Sunderland in pre-war silver and have started painting the props with black blades and yellow tips. Then I was checking my reference photo (L5802 taking off in the Air Britain book Ocean Sentinel) and the props don't look to be black. Checking other pre-war photos shows other a/c with props that aren't black.

 

When did the black/yellow combination come in? What was used before - specifically on Sunderlands?

 

Should I also post this in the Inter-War forum? - it's on the cusp which is why I put it here first.

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Well the point of yellow tips is to stop people walking into them, as in making them visible. The Sunderland wouldn't really have that problem. They were quite high.

Not sure if bright tips really work. I once came really close to walking into a turning prop, complete with coloured tips. The sick feeling remains vivid.

 

Sorry no help that. Reminds me of quite a moment.

 

 

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Looking through my Sunderland References, I would agree with Graham, there appears to be no

yellow tips on the front face, but the rear face on some/many appear to be black with pre/early WWII

Sunderland's.

 

This well known shot, shows unpainted forward blade faces with yellow tips, but aircraft is camouflaged

Sunderland Mk I

 

4 hours ago, noelh said:

The Sunderland wouldn't really have that problem. They were quite high.

If on the hard while beached I would agree, though I would still pay

 a healthy respect to turning props even if an Engine test.

On the water no so high and just as dangerous.

Look at the distance from the lower prop tips  with respect to the men on the barge

in the link below

 

Sunderland Servicing on Water

 

Generally Sunderland's had on the water, the props with the single blade upper

and two blades lower for safety reasons, as most times you approach a Sunderland

from astern under the wing

 

Regards

 

Alan

 

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2 hours ago, dogsbody said:

So rossm, you've posted this question in two different locations. Could you join them together so we can see all the remarks?

 

 

Chris

OK, I've put links the Interwar thread directing replies here and asked mods to lock that thread. Now I'll put your reply from there on this thread.

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14 hours ago, dogsbody said:

I'm not sure but while looking through the IWM site, I found this image. The caption states:

 

Groundcrew performing a routine overhaul on a Short Sunderland Mark I of No. 210 Squadron RAF, moored in Oban Bay, Scotland.

 

 

It is a wartime picture, as the aircraft is painted in camouflage and has a gas patch just forward of the cockpit. The props look to be painted black but the tip do not look yellow.

 

 

large_000000.jpg?_ga=2.179188196.1112134

 

 

 

Chris

 

Interesting, appears to be the same aircraft as in LDSModellers post, but shot on a different date as there are clearly yellow tips in one and not the other. The visibility of the yellow ring suggests it's not an ortho film effect.

 

 

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Found a photo showing clearly what I'm after - the colour of the prop blades in these pics of the protoype and my reference photo for the one I'm building???

 

large_000000.jpg?action=e&cat=photograph

INTER WAR BRITISH AIRCRAFT. © IWM (ATP 9499A) IWM Non Commercial License

 

large_000000.jpg?action=e&cat=photograph

INTER WAR BRITISH AIRCRAFT. © IWM (ATP 9376E) IWM Non Commercial License

 

 

large_000000.jpg?action=e&cat=photograph

INTER WAR BRITISH AIRCRAFT. © IWM (ATP 9499B) IWM Non Commercial License

 

AT the risk of offending the copyright police but strictly for educational use (my education) here is the one I'm building - props look very shiny, could they be bare metal?

L5802_web.jpg

 

 

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I'm not surprised at seeing early camouflaged aircraft still with shiny props. You can slap a coat of paint onto an aircraft fairly easily, if less so on a large one.  However you can't just do the same on a propeller because of the need for dynamic balancing which has to be done off-aircraft.  So a Sunderland unit would require a new set of props for every engine on every aircraft.  I suspect that that many simply weren't available, Any such change would only occur at a major servicing.

 

Just adding yellow tips might have been thought worth doing.

 

Which leads me to wonder about the amount of wear on the rear of propeller blades in desert conditions, and what implications there might have been. 

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I asked John Adams directly as I'm using some Aeroclub props and this is what he said........

 

"The DH licence built Hamilton Standard hollow steel bladed props were originally highly polished metal. Some props had the back of the blades painted matt black. Later the Black and yellow finish became the norm as camouflage was introduced."

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3 hours ago, Graham Boak said:

Which leads me to wonder about the amount of wear on the rear of propeller blades in desert conditions, and what implications there might have been. 

Down to bare metal sometimes assuming the propeller is metal. Particularly near the tip. Same with coral strips in the Pacific. Counterintuitively the back of the propeller suffers more weathering than the front. Something a lot of modellers aren't aware of.

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Interestingly, not one of the photos above show the spinners so kindly provided by Italeri in their Mk.1 kit.  So kind of them to make me have to cobble up something to look like those hubs...

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1 hour ago, noelh said:

Counterintuitively the back of the propeller suffers more weathering than the front. Something a lot of modellers aren't aware of.

 Indeed, I hadn't thought about that. But, it makes complete sense now that you pointed it out.

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2 hours ago, malpaso said:

Interestingly, not one of the photos above show the spinners so kindly provided by Italeri in their Mk.1 kit.  So kind of them to make me have to cobble up something to look like those hubs...

 

Later examples, including some Mk.1s that I've found, had the spinners. Not as many as I thought when I started looking at photos though.

 

Pavla do a set - https://www.hannants.co.uk/product/PAVU72143 - but check out those butt jointed blades. If you want I'll send you mine, with blades and hubs drilled for plastic rod to hold them together. I broke my golden rule and threw money at fleabay to get the Aeroclub ones. Figured it was better than letting an expensive kit sit nearly finished for the next twenty years or so 🙂.

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8 hours ago, rossm said:

Found a photo showing clearly what I'm after - the colour of the prop blades in these pics of the protoype and my reference photo for the one I'm building???

 

large_000000.jpg?action=e&cat=photograph

INTER WAR BRITISH AIRCRAFT. © IWM (ATP 9499A) IWM Non Commercial License

 

large_000000.jpg?action=e&cat=photograph

INTER WAR BRITISH AIRCRAFT. © IWM (ATP 9376E) IWM Non Commercial License

 

 

large_000000.jpg?action=e&cat=photograph

INTER WAR BRITISH AIRCRAFT. © IWM (ATP 9499B) IWM Non Commercial License

 

AT the risk of offending the copyright police but strictly for educational use (my education) here is the one I'm building - props look very shiny, could they be bare metal?

L5802_web.jpg

 

 

 

The first 3 photos are of the prototype Sunderland and not a production machine in an operational squadron.

 

 

 

Chris

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This is probably a better photo. Thinking about the propeller's use and unlike land base props which were often very shiny, I thought that they might have some form of surface treatment. I think that this proves the point. these will be a silvery grey.

 

John

 

Neg974_zpslsbh1hw9.jpg

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For what it's worth, pre-war Stranraers in the silver scheme (also a Pegasus installation, but fixed-pitch Fairey-Reed props) had all-dark (black?) blades, at least on the front faces, with a narrow stripe at about 3/4 of the way down the blade - this looks to have been Red not Yellow, and is very hard to see on most photos. I guess this was an earlier attempt at the visibility stripe which was eventually changed to the black/yellow tips?

 

There's plenty of evidence that other "modern" types coming into service in camo from 1937 onwards didn't initially have yellow tips - Blenheim Is is the example that immediately springs to mind. Was there a directive to propeller manufacturers at some point in 1938-39?

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