Hucknall air day

Cracking photos, specially the Hurricane, my favourite WW2 Bird. THanks for taking the time to share them. Bex

Hi Adam. Not very far from Tollerton (Notts Airport) at all. That’s just due east on Nottingham and Rolls Royce Hucknall (i.e. the factory and airfield) is just two or three miles north of Nottingham and is located immediately south of the town of Hucknall, off the B6009 (Watnall Rd), here

However, I couldn’t say what is liley to be seen there during ‘normal’ hours of business as it’s a private airfield. Clearly, the main runway cannot be fully used as it has an engine test rig on it which is, erm, large!

Great shots everyone!

Where is Hucknall in relation to Nottingham East Midlands Airport? Just asking because the Hunter did a surprise fly past along the runway (low, loud and fast – very cool), and the Spit landed, as did a Chipmunk at the airport earlier this afternoon (yesterday now).

thanks

I’ll stick one more up from the little Olympus. RR’s PR.XIX PS853/C.

Cheers mate 🙂
Im currently using a kodak Z740 5mp 10x optical zoom camea,which has suited my other purposes,mainly railway photography,perfectly.
The only problem im having is getting the aircraft to look bright enough without effecting the sky.
When i take a phot,sometimes the aircraft becomes a silloheute against the sky,but if i brighten the picture,while the plane becomes brighter,the sky becomes over bright,and just appears white,which completey ruins the effect in many of my pics.
Any advice here?

Regards
Chris

Hi Chrisj94.

Nothing wrong with those! You’ve posted ’em up it’s your first post and your first go. There’s absolutley nothing wrong with that. We all had to start somehwere. The camera I use is a borrowed (thanks 1Group!) Olympus C-370 3x optical zoom (3.2 megapixel jobbie) and it produces adequate results. Sometomes, all that is required is just a little imagination. Pop some more up, I’m sure the more experienced photographers on this forum will give give you friendly help and advice – I know I need some (cdp waits for the barrage of remarks now!!)

Ok,these are my first aviation phots,so not sure what youll think,any constructive critiscm welcome,as id certainly like to improve my skills 🙂

Apologies for the quality of the last few pics,my battery ran very low 🙁

Regards
Chris

Neal – the entire JP routine was bonkers! I’ll not rub it in but it was a magic day out. Put it in your diary for next year! That’s an order! Not one aircraft that flew diasapointed. Toilet facilites were a bit difficult to pin down though!

Bloody hell, I totally forgot about this show. Really like the JP photos.

Neal

And a few more. Some more of this will appear on Noel and Chris’ Aviation Pages at some point soon (well, when I’ve resized, clipped and cropped, etc mine!). A very good days sport in Nottinghamshire!

Nice pics. Mustang Janie was at Margate as well today.

A few more, checkout the JP taking off and landing, we’ve both never seen a JP displayed like this before, awesome, never seen a jet do a stall turn!

The Ambassdaor G-37-3 was also G-ARKD “Golden Lion”, the second Ambassador prototype was used for various purposes after about 1951. It flew with Bristol Proteus 705’s in the early 50’s and Rolls Royce Tynes then Darts in 1958 to about 1966. Scrapped October 1969. Info from Air Britain Winter 2002 (Jack Meaden).

Couple of pictures on David Webster’s website www.planecrazyheritage.com

http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/crazyheritage/1958/FarnboroNEGS/Jpegs/Fnb026.htm & http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/crazyheritage/1958/FarnboroNEGS/Jpegs/Fnb030.htm

G-ALFR was used for Napier Eland trials in 1955-ish

In one of these turbo-prop forms, the Ambassador was grossly over-powered. Capt Ron Gillman mentions having to climb at very high angles to avoid overspeeding after take-off; 4000ft/min! His book “Croydon to Concorde” is a jolly good read; anyone know if Capt Gillman is still with us?

G-ALFR was, briefly, grossly under-powered when it shed both (piston) engines during a heavy landing in early (CoG) trials. The aircraft apparently bounced back-up and flew over its engines before being safely brought back by the late Ron Clear.

I don’t believe that the AS57 was ever pure jet (Nene) powered, although its an interesting idea…

To Neil and others:

Just stumbled on this in my meanderings.
The Hucknall Air Day in June is celebrating the 90th anniversary of the aerodrome and should include a worthwhile and interesting display.
I don’t know too much myself yet, but a few pleasant surprises are quite possible.

All are welcome, but it will be strictly PPR, and no arrivals or departures during the display.

If anyone is struggling to get information, please let me know, and I will do my best to help.

BR – I think the high wing twin is probably a Dart-powered York or Lancastrian used as a flying test-bed. I can probably find out more if you like.

Oh – just seen the comment about the Ambassador – may well be right.

Further enquiries suggests its the Airspeed Elizabethan G-37-3 probably with Nenes

You lot are pulling my plonker! :rolleyes: 🙂 🙂

Please see attached PDF of Hucknall noting the current locations of the engine test bed, two grass runways and the latter’s lengths. Certainly longer than Shuttleworth!

Just found out what confused me about the RR Spitfire last year. He made two approaches coming in from the west past 11 engine test bed, before landing on the 26 end of the old runway which gave him about 900 metres to play with. The grass runways are generally considered unsuitable for Spitfires (don`t know why!) but Taff Smith landed on 29 ok a couple of years ago.

Peter

It’s the Airspeed Ambassador that was used as an engine testbed and is seen in the photo sporting RR turbines in place of the usual piston engines. Someone made a valiant attempt to get this particular Ambo preserved but sadly the project fell though and she was scrapped. The sole Ambassador in the world now resides hangared at Duxford in the midst of a very long restoration to static display condition. Rather than for its positive role in post-war British civil aviation, the type of aircraft is sadly remembered more for the fact that it was the make of airliner involved in the Munich air disaster which took the lives of famous footballers.

I can make out the Javelin and Lightning, but what is the high-wing twin-engine to the right of centre?

If someone were to PM “Ben Twings” (Mark Albery) on forums.flyer.co.uk, he would tell you if the air day is on or not. Mark is a former RR employee and current flying instructor at Hucknall.

Hi Pete, I just Googled “Flight Test Establishment hucknall”. Take a look at the results. Notable hits are:

http://www.rolls-royce.com/history/heritage/offices/hucknall.jsp and
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/g6nhy.uk/rolls.htm – this one is quite descriptive

Thanks for that, I just found this barely distinguishable old black and white picture from about 1960 that you might be interested in.

Different war, but here’s two Nieuports and a Sopwith at Hucknall, July 2005.

Hi Pete, I just Googled “Flight Test Establishment hucknall”. Take a look at the results. Notable hits are:

http://www.rolls-royce.com/history/heritage/offices/hucknall.jsp and
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/g6nhy.uk/rolls.htm – this one is quite descriptive