Today I was shown an old what I thought looked to be a pair of classic jet flight stick handles. Unfortunatly I did not take any of the details of any part numbers that were printed or have chance to take a photo but I provide an explaination in the hope that someone here may know what aircraft they may be from?
Black ‘joystick’ handles approximatly 18” tall with a large metal leaver protuding fowards hinging back towards the stick so it could be pulled towards the user (wheel brake handle prehaps?)
The top of the handle had a large sprung cover (metal) split into two seperate sections both covering small round black push buttons (bombs/rockets?) at the front of the stick above the ‘brake?’ leaver was a square shaped metal trigger which when pressed did not move until ‘both’ covers the top of the handle were opened up (these having been lifted 90 degrees upwards unveiling the two forementioned push buttons.
Pressing the trigger against quite a strong spring gave a singl click, it had to be depressed to ‘fire another shot’
One the left hand side level with the base of the unit there was a smal flat sided leaver which could turn 90 degrees and back again quite smoothly & freely (ie. not geared)
Ok this is a very vague explaination but I hope that it may lead to examples of aircraft that may have used such a handle? My first thoughts that they belonged to an early RAF jet (mainly because of the ‘brake handle’ and have seen pictures in the past of Supermarine Swifts having such a unit.
As there were two identical items prehaps they were from a trainer, meteor, Vampire, hunter? I did not think they were any later that these kind of aircraft as they were quite basic -but I may be very wrong here?)
Any thoughts welcome! I have had a look at some cockpit photos but I have not found anything that matches (all I must add were RAF jets)
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January 14, 2012 at 9:29 pm