I recently acquired this 10×8 shot. It is of Rolls Royce’s Mk XIX and with the flaps up and the tail wheel still down, we are seeing here a take off that as soon as the main gear is clear it has been selected up and the nose held down to gain speed…and drama.
I acknowledge that this image could have been digitally adjusted with Photoshop/PSP. If so it has been done exceedingly well and with some cunning, leaving the tail wheel down, part way through its cycle, and showing partial vision through the prop blur of the grass and taxi way behind.
Running some ratio numbers over known dimensions, the prop spinner backplate is 28″ diameter. This scales the spinner centre at 74″ above the runway centre marker. From the Mk XIV AP the dimensions given for the radius of the propeller are 62.5″.
This means that give or take an inch there is 11.5 inches clearance of the propeller to the runway.
My question is can anybody confirm that this is a genuine photo, and perhaps know the location and approx date?
Mark
With acknowledgement and apologies to an unknown photographer.
By: Mark12 - 19th September 2008 at 20:48
Its a fake pure & simple…don’t need to check photoshop etc, no way would the RR TPs fly that way, nor would they or their bosses be pleased to see their flying ability/airmanship ‘criticised’ by photoshop in this way
Oh really! I’ll send you a pm. 🙂
Mark
By: Rocketeer - 19th September 2008 at 20:42
The aircraft in question has just displayed over my house, it’s not every day I can say I have seen ‘the company’ aircraft (big grin).
Dean (a very happy RR Apprentice!)
Its a fake pure & simple…don’t need to check photoshop etc, no way would the RR TPs fly that way, nor would they or their bosses be pleased to see their flying ability/airmanship ‘criticised’ by photoshop in this way
By: Eye on the Sky - 18th September 2008 at 17:38
The aircraft in question has just displayed over my house, it’s not every day I can say I have seen ‘the company’ aircraft (big grin).
Dean (a very happy RR Apprentice!)
By: 92fis - 17th September 2008 at 20:18
Yes Tony it is a fake.
By: Tony at BH - 17th September 2008 at 19:17
just wanted to say i’m really enjoying this thread. I am looking at both pics and coming to my own conclusions but i’ll let you experts slug it out.
Back to you guys.
i was enjoying this thread yesterday but i’ve come back to it this evening and we have gone off the subject a bit!!
So is it a fake or not. Come on guys.
By: JDK - 17th September 2008 at 14:57
:rolleyes: Moving on…
By: Ric W - 17th September 2008 at 14:38
Collision with the terrain? Adequate height would have meant no accident. Whatever the preceding manoeuvre(s) and however you define ‘low flying’, the rule remains “don’t hit the ground”. A response to the reasonable, but sadly incorrect statement by pagen01.
I didn’t mention the pilot’s name for good reason.
The evidence showed that a Rolls Royce Spitfire was crashed into the ground, and there was no mechanical reason to cause the accident.
Do you just have a compulsion to post smart **** replies? Or do you just do it for a grin when you are bored? We all know that a crash is when flying stops…. low or otherwise. Evidence showed hitting the floor was a result of a mistake made entering a loop at that height…which wasn’t low… just too low for that particular manoeuvre.
I’m pretty sure Pagen01’s statement
“I can’t imagine for one minute RR flying their Spit that low with the gear up…”
doesn’t mean going down towards terra firma at quite a speed. Pagen01’s statement is not incorrect. Do you really think that he meant to put it into the ground? He wasn’t deliberately flying low, he was having an accident, sadly a fatal one.
Seeing as the aircraft in the photo is NOT RM689 and the pilot is NOT the same one, and this particular aircraft hasn’t hit the ground yet, I fail to see the point. Even if it isn’t photoshopped, it’s not like it hasn’t been done before, and its not likely to be the first or the last time it’s been done… even in a Spitfire.
People (much like you) that sit and try and score points in a thread as though you personally have never made an error in your life, are as bad as the self informed experts that make all the comments on the youtube video’s of such accidents.
By: JDK - 17th September 2008 at 11:12
Its funny how light-hearted and humerous threads get ‘bogged-down’ like this.
Fair enough! Moving on…
By: Propstrike - 17th September 2008 at 11:10
I think by the fact that you posted ‘Pilot RIP’ , you introduced an element of respect/rememberance which is of course absent in technical reports.
Its funny how light-hearted and humerous threads get ‘bogged-down’ like this.
By: JDK - 17th September 2008 at 11:00
I would have thought that remembering the fellow is more important than raking over the circumstances of the accident.
Remembrance of people is quite a different item, I hope, from learning from accidents. Which is why the AAIB reports do not mention names and do mention factors. Which is why I did not mention names or ‘mistakes’.
I’ve done enough obituaries and presented enough accident reports (in print for the purposes of future accident avoidance) of pilots who I’d rather were alive to want to do any more.
By: Propstrike - 17th September 2008 at 10:53
I would have thought that remembering the fellow is more important than raking over the circumstances of the accident.
He may have made an error, but that does not make him a non-person.
I do not suppose JDK meant to suggest that.
By: JDK - 17th September 2008 at 10:31
I don’t think that classes as flying low.
Collision with the terrain? Adequate height would have meant no accident. Whatever the preceding manoeuvre(s) and however you define ‘low flying’, the rule remains “don’t hit the ground”. A response to the reasonable, but sadly incorrect statement by pagen01.
I didn’t mention the pilot’s name for good reason.
The evidence showed that a Rolls Royce Spitfire was crashed into the ground, and there was no mechanical reason to cause the accident.
By: Phantex - 17th September 2008 at 08:49
“…but is it not possible to photoshop out the main undercarriage and make right that area….”
Yes it is. It just takes a bit of experience and skill.
By: Ric W - 17th September 2008 at 08:33
What short memories we have.
G-AGLT – pilot RIP.
It was G-ALGT, and the Pilot was David Moore.
I don’t think that classes as flying low.
By: Propstrike - 17th September 2008 at 08:32
What short memories we have.
The pilot was David Moore.
By: Mudmover - 17th September 2008 at 08:10
Is it at T/O with the gear photoshopped out,there’s a lot of aileron input,could be a crosswind but also opposition to propeller torque?
By: JDK - 17th September 2008 at 02:20
Surely it is obvious it is Photoshoppery to the U/C now, I can’t imagine for one minute RR flying their Spit that low with the gear up…
What short memories we have.
G-ALGT – pilot RIP.
By: DazDaMan - 16th September 2008 at 21:24
I think the doctored photo is much older, pre 1990 (missing logo) and possibly ‘film’ rather than ‘digital’ (more grain rather than pixels).
The “logo”, I fancy, is the gremlin(?) “I Spy” noseart on the port-side cowling. It’s missing in Mk.12’s shot, but clearly in evidence in the Airliners original.
Rolls-Royce have owned ‘853 since about 1996 – it’s had their “presentation”-style writing on the fuel tank cover since about that time, too.
By: Phantom Phixer - 16th September 2008 at 21:21
How do the tailwheel doors hang if the tailwheel is locked down for flight.
Ive seen many pictures which look as though the doors can be locked around the tailwheel leg as is suggested in this picture.
If that can be done the picture that Mark 12 posted has the tailwheel doors in an open position. And look at the ridge created by the doors been open towards the rudder hinge line.
This picture of a BBMF Spitfire also looks as though the doors can be closed with the leg down.
By: The Bump - 16th September 2008 at 21:12
Photoshop looks likely, but if it was taken at Fairford on departures day, the pilots do tend to try and ‘upstage’ each other with low departures.
If it was ‘POD’ at the controls, I can’t really imagine a pilot with a test pilot background doing that……would he?
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September 16, 2008 at 3:35 pm