C A T to Newquay !!!

Fairly big news down here as regards this move,and mentions museum and pleasure flights with 30 odd jobs, (does this include volunteers).
However it also mentions business rate relief and no doubt there will be other incentives.
The idea is to tap into the ever expanding ‘tourist trade’, but ignores this peaks for only a couple of months in the year,and is ‘not expanding’. The ‘local’ interest will certainly NOT be enough and the distance from centres of population will not be an improvement on its Coventry location.
What was the ‘Cornwall Aero Park’ morphed into Flambards due to changing visitor requirements and the fact that exhibits were outside in our very corrosive climate.
The Newquay Airport location (Aerohub enterprise zone)) has now been designated a business development area that offers several benefits for those wishing to relocate there,how the ‘taildragging flights’ will cope with the single runway (and plenty of xwinds) is unclear.However Barry (Spitfire Corner) will now have a new neighbour.

B17 Croydon

I seem to recall that there was a B17 fuselage at Croydon (outside the old terminal) which was the subject of an ‘import’ situation.

Hydraulic damage

YB The Provost failure report actually states that the pin failure ‘most likely’ was caused by a crack that was originally initiated by Hydralic action in the cylinder.
The corrosion issue on its own would not have caused cylinder detachment.
The lower cylinders of a radial are quite frequently ‘stressed’ to a greater degree than the upper ones as even a small quantity of oil present will increase the load well above the norm.
Over its life (and many starts) these cylinders will have been subject to an extra fatigue factor that should be borne in mind during normal maintenence. The Leonides is a high power to weight ratio engine but needs the same ‘pre start’ treatment as any other radial, clouds of smoke during start up may look very spectacular, but just have a thought for the ‘loads’ being created whilst this is going on.

Engine extentions

TT I think the fact that more aircraft will be on ‘extensions’ (down to the engineer not the CAA) will be a big problem in future years.
The Leonides is a far more complex engine than a flat 4 or 6 as it is s-charged,geared,and has an injection carburetor with associated ‘capsules’.
When you add on the (radial) potential for a cylinder/rod to get hydraulic damage on start then how does an engineer satisfy himself that all is well with an old unit without a detailed inspection, (and how far can that go).
The simple fact is there is no real incentive for a licenced engineer to do this due to the potential legal issues if a unit fails or indeed a system component goes down.
This of course leads us to the other issue of where the experienced licenced engineers will be coming from to provide this service!!!

Jocks RAF Flying

Before becoming ‘Mr Biggin’ Jock had been a post war RAF fighter pilot and flew 77 missions with the American Air Force (Sabre’s) in Korea.There is a good article about this in ‘Edition 9 (Mar 2011) Aviation Classics’ on-line.

G-ARJZ

After several ‘dunkings’ RJZ arrived at Redhill back on wheels. I think the floats needed to be longer and a few more HP would have been nice.

Jock Maitland

A real ‘Fighter Jock’ who gave GA its historic base at Biggin which led to thousands of individuals becoming involved with aviation at all levels.
At its height his air shows (Fairs) spread over half the country and took on the mantle of a travelling circus,(some of these being three day affairs).
A true ‘friend’ of aviation he was always available to be prevailed upon to ‘book your airshow act’,and treated impetuous youngsters wishing to get in the program in a generous manner,making it a priviledge to attend those events.
Thanks Jock, your contribution will always be remembered.

Peter (Pobjoy) C

Wyvern conta props

I seem to recall that the main problem with the Wyvern was the huge props going into fine pitch when the mechanism failed (which they did). This left the pilot flying a very heavy aircraft with a massive airbrake upfront,with virtually no chance of retaining control during the resulting flare if force landed.It was probably the most dangerous of postwar production aircraft with regard to accident rate in relation to numbers built and hours flown.