Bristol 171 Sycamore A91-1 Engine Run after 25 years

Good question Filton Flyer……I did have the last location of XG544….in South East Wales….Carmarthenshire as I recall but have filed the piece of paper somewhere!

For many years the real XG544 was part of the private collection of Roy Flood, owner of Castle Motors, and parked at his private residence in Tremar, Cornwall. It was sold on in 2000, and hasn’t been reported since. Wrecks & Relics mentioned that it went to an owner in Wales. I’d love to know where it went.

Andrew

Thanks for the update, now will the real XG 544 stand up?!

This Mk 52 never served with the RAF .The G reg was the Bristol temporary registration allocation for test flying aircraft.As CA328 it was delivered in March 1958 with CA327 for VIP duties initially before reverting to more general duties with the subsequent codes. Following its military service it was sold to Karl Muller at Mellinghausen (a farmer who made a very good schnapps!) who flew it until August 1982 to support firefighting on the Luneburg Heath alongside several other Mk52s that the Hanover fire brigade and he had acquired.It was sold to Peter Schmid in June 1988 after several years in storage.
Peter repainted it as XG544 in 1994 after he rolled sister ship HB- XRA (previously painted as XG544) over. It was first offered for sale in 1995 but no takers until Red Bull bought it and all the spares etc circa 2009. Following liaison with The Helicopter Museum which was able to provide the necessary manuals and other information it was re flown in July 2013 .

“In the Hangar-8 we could see another piece of the collection still relatively unknown to fans because just bought. The Bristol 171B Sycamore HR.52 is the only helicopter of its kind in the world in flying condition, with a very long history as well. We tried to reconstruct its history with the data in our possession. Built in 1957 and after a short period of service with the Royal Air Force (serial G-18-148 c / n 13475) it was sold between 1957-1959 together with other 49 planes of the West German Air Force. The Sycamore has served in Germany with the Air Force with different identifiers codes as CA +328, AS +324, +206 SC, WE +545, +112 GD, 78 +17; retired from service in 1972/3 , it was included in the register of German civil aircraft as D-HALD in 1976 until 1983, when it was deleted without the navigability certificate, re-registered in 1987-1989, with the same serial number, it was then included into the Swiss aircraft register in August 1991 as HB-RXB and sold to Peter Schmid of Fleigermuseum of Alternhein where it has always been kept in perfect flying conditions; sold to Red Bull in 2010 it was registered in August 2011 as OE-XSY and bears the colors of the Royal Air Force Air Support Command Squadron 32 with code XG544.”

This would seem to confirm that the Red Bull helicopter is not XG544.

http://www.swissheli.com/history/hb-rxb.htm

Photos of HB-RXB which is painted as XG544, but is this the real XG544?

[Dug a bit deeper into this one. The Sycamore at OW was probably XG544. It was the last airworthy RAF Sycamore and its final flight was from Northolt to Higher Blagdon and the Torbay Aircraft Museum on 11 August 1972. This would have been a few days after the OW show.
There’s a good picture of it arriving at the museum in “Veteran and Vintage Aircraft” (4th revision)
Bill

I remember a Sycamore displaying at Old Warden in the 70’s- can anyone recollect the number , and where is it now, if extant?

I have a couple of poor photos of the Sycamore at Old Warden in 1972. Unfortunately I can’t read the number from either of the shots but my caption says that it was from 32 squadron Northolt and it was the penultimate flight of the last RAF Sycamore. I believe it went into the RAFM collection.
Bill

I remember a Sycamore displaying at Old Warden in the 70’s- can anyone recollect the number , and where is it now, if extant?

Cool 🙂