Bond in Motion, London Film Museum

Thanks all, that makes sense on the BD-5J.

I think Little Nellie is G-AVDH, the real ARZB is at Old Warden and is covered in stickers and the reg is in a different place. I have checked my photos from Reymerston Hall and the one at the Film Museum matches up with the same one there. From a big of digging around it turns out that while painted as ARZB it is actually AVDH.

Cheers

Rich

I met Ken in the 1970s when my father’s school was building a Gyro Glider from scratch (yes everything), and he was very helpful and enthusiastic. He told us then that the hours on Little Nellie were way beyond any other Auto gyro he had and that it was in uncharted waters as far as fatigue life. He was considering building a brand new one and transferring the reg over. At some point after that he was involved in a car crash while towing Nellie between airshows, and a significant amount of damage was done to the machine. So like all historic aircraft, much has been renewed over Nellie’s service life.

Steve

Little Nellie(s)

Ken Wallis kept a large “spares support” (Say 100%) for minimizing any mishaps that might occur on the “Little Nellie” airshow circuit. Trigger’s broom comes to mind (not to mention the “Spirit of Artemis”).
P.S. Out of interest ,and it can be seen in the ” engine off” video referred to above, do note the added tailplane ( Spitfire shaped ) on Little Nellie as flown in the 70’s and onwards .

Flying BD-5s did not have folding wings. Also, we see Bond taxi the aircraft some distance. For safety, we’ll assume it was not being powered by jet thrust, so the wheels were either driven or it was being towed. I would image the example on display doesn’t have a registration, let alone a c/n.
There were/are plenty if unfinished prop BD-5 airframes about left over when the homebuilding program (it wasn’t designed for the film) collapsed in the early 70s. Unless the film makers had cash to spare, I’d expect that’s where they sourced the non flying examples.

The Pima example is N505MR, according to some research the airworthy example was built by well known film pilot Corkey Fornof and was N70CF…recently offered for sale.

A few days ago (Aug 6, to be exact) there was a thread “Little Nellie”, it reported Wallis’ example is now in at Old Warden. However, even that isn’t what it seems as the actual airframe used in filming was severely damaged in a crash (they say it’s on YouTube), so it’s not the “same” example.

http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?143001-Little-Nellie

AFAIK the wings on a BD-5 are removable, but not foldable. So that would make this a modified version for the movie. The BD-5J that flew for the Bond movie is supposedly on display at the Pima Air & Space museum. Could this be the one that was used for the shots on the ground?