powerandpassionIllegal nonsense
Excellent video with pure sound and what a view out the window!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM2ZQj6YjiA&feature=player_embedded#at=20
mmitch.
Just amazing what you can do with computer generated imagery ! Almost looks real ! A Mosquito flying with a Lancaster and a Hurricane and a Spitfire and a and a and a. Fat chance ! Regulations would stop this sort of nonsense ever happening. Only exists in the minds of those barflys in the colonies. Poppycock.
powerandpassiondwg number
Having studied drawings, manuals etc for the Hawker Family I have found that even the data plates had a drawing number. These indicated where the plate was to be located, the layout, what was to go on it, what font etc etc. I could obviously be wrong but I am sure that 41H 68118 for the Hawker Hind, for instance, is simply the drawing number for the data plate (68118) in the Hawker Family (41H). 68118 fits nicely into the range of drawings that I have for the bi-planes and in particular the Hind (the Tornado & Typhoon starting around the 99000 mark).
On the dataplates in post 1 there are 5 boxes for information :
Serial Number 41H XXXXX
Drawing No. eg D 59048, relating to location of dataplate on a/c, eg Australian Demon has B57549-1, being gun ring assembly dwg, with dataplate actually affixed to gun ring, and corresponding dwg number listed in Australian Demon specifications.
Date (of acceptance by final inspection?)
Registration, in the case of UK registered a/c of 1930’s vintage, a ‘K’ or ‘L’ code, eg L7191
Inspectors stamp
So I believe that the 41H XXXXX is the construction number, though it cannot be a sequential numbering system as previously posted.
Somewhere in the XXXXX is type variant, factory location and some system for linking an a/c identity back to materials issued for the construction of the a/c, for forensic engineering purposes.
Each spar in the 1930’s aircraft had a separate identity and a separate dataplate that linked back to the raw steel batch used in its manufacture.
No doubt these records were kept as part of a sophisticated quality control system.
If the 41H code continued on to Harriers surely there is somebody still alive that can decode this Rosetta stone.
Ideally somebody has a doorstop which is a big thick book with all this information…… if it is a retired uncle, give him a beer and get him to talk !
powerandpassionYes 41H is the Airmin/MOD designator for the Hawker Company…still being used during Hawk and Harrier manufacture
Thank you, do you have any Hawk or Harrier numbers for comparison ?
Does anyone have any Hurricane numbers or early Hawker numbers for comparison to try and understand the logic of the system.
powerandpassionNumbers are off dataplates
powerandpassionElectrical fitter notes
Those things painted just forward of the tailplane (and in your list above) aren’t constructors numbers, they’re the RAF serials. When the RAF serial allocations reached the end of DG, they deliberately skipped to DJ to avoid confusion with De Havilland.
I have hand written electrical fitter/inspector notes which seem to deal with the construction of MX XXX series aircraft, the notes making megger testing comments on a sequential number of aircraft. If the numbers are RAF serials, then perhaps it is logical that an Air Ministry allocation of serials became the default ‘constructor number’. I wonder if this is true for Australian built Mosquitos, or Canadian built Mosquitos in US service, let alone Chinese Nationalist service.
I have asked my father who flew Mosquitos where the ‘dataplate’ was and he can’t recall, probably as most people don’t know where the dataplate on the car they drive is located, let alone the manufacturers actual serial number. B for Baker is what you got shot down in.
I have seen on the oil tank of the NZ Avspecs Yagen Mosquito a painted decal which has come as close to a manufacturers ID as anything I have seen to date.
Perhaps there is no ID dataplate on a Mosquito.
powerandpassionThank you
Found a picture and more info
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78757504@N07/7226989840/
above link has pics of outside too
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_there_still_a_Warring_and_Gillow_shop_in_the_north_now
Thank you, most appreciated.
powerandpassionInteresting post in the thread below..
From
http://www.pprune.org/military-aircrew/519348-mossie-plane-saved-britain-4.html
Is there an address for this warehouse, it would be something to see.
powerandpassionTwo fingers
Thank you for that very informative post.
The fact that offers of some sort of armistice were being made by Hermann Goering, just days after a particularly bad drubbing of the Luftwaffe by the RAF (surely just a coincidence), which were presumably rejected out-of-hand, shows that at least the opportunity for taking away the risk of losing the Battle-of-Britain was there.
Perhaps history, or at least the history of the Battle-of-Britain, does need to be rewritten slightly, perhaps Britain�s leaders were confident (or more confident) of winning by 20th August? Either that or Winston Churchill was playing an incredible game of brinksmanship with the future of �the civilised world�.
“In politics there is no sentimentality”- Stalin.
In truth Britain did not chose to fight the battle of Britain, it chose to defend the preliminary battle for air superiority where the timing was chosen by the luftwaffe. Given the lack of UK resources ( only one forge in the UK capable of striking out Merlin crankshafts in 1940) the prudent course was to allow the Phoney war to continue. Ambassador Joseph Kennedy of the US gave the UK three weeks to survive a Nazi onslaught and very few prudent observers would have disagreed. Practical politics determined that if one additional day could be secured to prepare then any pretext would do. If I were in the position of the UK government I would entertain anything to gain time.
No consideration of UK views in 1940 can be appreciated in the absence of understanding the arcana of dismay associated with Nazi diplomacy from the Sudetenland onwards. Most specifically Herr Hitler in his agreement with Chamberlain over the Sudetenland repudiated any intent to occupy any other land in Europe. The forced assimilation of Czechoslovakia in 1938 soon afterwards made it obvious that any agreement with Hitler was worthless. All this on a backgound of Mein Kampf, written in 1929, which laid out the Nazi vision for Europe. No agreement with Nazi Germany could be relied upon, and no interest that was contrary to the Nazi vision for Europe was sustainable if not backed by force of arms. To construe some form of brinkmanship on the part of the UK government was to credit it with some form of choice in the circumstances it faced. To apply a confection such as a ‘battle for civilisation’ was an indulgence for later times, when at that moment isolationist America was urged by its ambassador to cut it’s losses. It was a choice between extinction or honourable demise, and it is to the eternal credit of the United Kingdom that it chose honourable demise.
The Luftwaffe did more than it ever had done in Poland and France, introducing Total War in the form of the bombing of Coventry, and focusing it’s entire might on the campaign. What history records as a victory for the UK would have seemed at the time the narrowest and most astonishing of escapes, an aberration in a sequence of momentus Nazi successes, by no means certain of longevity.
That Nazi, or fascist Japanese strategy for that matter, was predicated on a comprehension that the Anglosphere would yield passively to crude force was a naivete. Churchill rose as the perfect expression of defiance. It was not within the marrow of the UK to entertain an accomodation with an invader, Spanish Armada, Napoleon or Hitler. In realpolitik the UK did later form an alliance with the murderer Stalin, and held back from defining any accomodation with Nazi Germany exclusive of total surrender until after 1943, allowing Hess some apprehension that a quixotic attempt at peace with the UK was possible in 1941.
In summary I must say that I am very glad the UK put two fingers up in 1940.
powerandpassionLove a Linde
Fuel Injection. Interrupter gear. Leading edge slats. Offset gunsight. Production line mentality. Perspex. Ni-cad batteries. Jet engined service aircraft.
They even had self inflating life jackets.
The technology must be considered in context :
1. More German engineering graduates per head of population from 1890 – WW2, the state emphasised and supported engineering development to create a legacy which is still felt today. The English approach relied on eccentric brilliance ( Barnes Wallis, Mitchell, Whittle) and the legacy laid down by 19th Century industrialization, railway & ship development to ‘work it all out in the end’. Watch what happens in 25 years time with the current Chinese emphasis on engineering graduates.
2. A 45 year old, energetic, technological literate in the form of Goering pushing the adoption of new technologies, from engines to architecture, versus the Air Ministry, hide bound, bureaucratic, fixated on biplanes, incredibly persecuting an innovator like Sidney Cotton (Sidcot suit, aerial survey, canopy blister) for the insolence of new ideas and technologies.
3. National Socialism concentrating 30% of state expenditure on rearming, repudiating War Reparations, printing money (like today) while the British government concentrated on paying off WW1 debt, road repair and schools in peacetime mode, at least until 1936 (Spanish Civil War), when policy progressively changed.
So, no wonder The Luftwaffe had great technology.
Still great technology is in the mind of the beholder – what impresses an engineer might not impress a maintenance fitter. If you operate a Linde forklift today, ask your maintenance guy about the pleasure of it – ask the Luftwaffe grunt on the Eastern front trying to fix a fuel injection issue in the middle of a winter night with bombs going off how brilliant it is compared to a Shturmovik, which you could just hit with an axe to get going.
In the end it was all part of a system which industrialized the processing of corpses into soap and clothing, had einsatzgruppen to liquidate folk in a systematic and efficient way, and this I take into context with the technology. I find it naive that the warbird movement in the US seems to want to put a swastika on the tailfin as part of ‘authenticity’. Why not just lay a few emaciated bodies on the ground for that authentic touch ?
Still, I would put the boys from Napier up against BMW, Geoffrey De Havilland against Willy Messerschmit in any bar drinking contest, and back the Poms on ideas and liver.
powerandpassionPren Cable:
Terry, can you please just scan the whole AP and send it to everybody ! If it is delivered with a pizza and can of beer that would be good too !
powerandpassionI reckon the smell is one of the best parts of vintage aviation ! So far I have figured out I am attracted to :
Radon gas, emitted by the decay of radium filled gauges, deadly.
Phenolic compounds, emitted by resin impregnated fabric components such as pulleys, old circuit boards and panels, deadly
Asbestos dust, from flaking firewalls, supercharger gears, brake pads and the roofs of old storage sheds, deadly.
This is the sweet smell you get when you walk into a room of old aircraft bits.
I am thinking of blending these into an underarm deodorant called ‘Top Gun’, have the airport beagles all over me , no doubt.
powerandpassion[QUOTE=sopwith.7f1;2046076]Hi P&P
I thought my eyesight was bad”.
It must be if you are attracted to the Hector ! Very busy cockpit, quite different to Hind/Demon. Happy to swap ASI, tell me what to do.
powerandpassionWired
All,
Been going through engineering notes and wiring diagrams and keep coming across names of different types of electrical cable. I’m curious to know more about them and what might be a suitable (cheap) modern equivalent for a static display cockpit that won’t actually carry a live circuit.
Examples of cable descriptions include:
Uniflex 4 – 5E/84
Unicel 4 – 5E/1358
Unicel 37 L.T.- 5E/1361
Ducel 4 – 5E/1362
Ducel 7 – 5E/1363Likewise, on the wiring diragrams, each wire segment carries a code either “U.19”, “T.4” or “D.4”. I’m wondering if this refers to Unicel 19, Teleflex 4 and Ducel 4?
If so, what do the numbers mean exactly??
Apart from Terry P’s excellent post I can only add what I have gleaned from too many hours glazing over DH Mosquito wiring diagrams :
Cable code
U19 = Unicel 19 Amp
T4= Tricel 4 Amp
D4 = Ducel 4 Amp
Once you get the drift it is all pretty straightforward, electrical engineers don’t seem to want too much mystery.
Apart from the Cable code there is the function code, eg Fuel Contents Gauges = S, so cable S31 is the 31st cable in a bunch routing fuel contents information. Much like modern machinery wiring, there is a little collar with S31 on the cable in the physical example of wiring.
Most recently I have twigged that Breeze type sockets which connect wiring looms have pins identified alphabetically, eg A-Z, so cable S31 goes to pin K in a Breeze socket male end connecting to a female end taking S31 out through pinhole H.
So S31 D6 J D2 J means Fuel Contents cable S31 (Ducel 6) into Breeze socket pin J output as (Ducel 2) into Breeze socket pin J, I think !
There really is quite a lot of wiring in these old flying mechanisms – a big job to rewire, which from the oxidised state of most of the 70 year old wiring I have seen would probably be prudent….
Ducel (cellulose) covered cable might be hard to find, unless you cannibilised some vintage electrics – no doubt the old radio folk would know what to do. I have observed ‘old stye’ sheathed wiring used in modern electrical element control systems, due to heat resistance – any folk supplying industrial electrical elements would no doubt be able to supply this, if it is the ‘look & feel’ you are after.
I reckon you should wire to fire. Use supplies from your local auto electrician to allow gauge functionality. Make you UC warning horn work and gravity switch pop the top off a fire extinguisher ! Connect the prop feathering switch to the feathering pump. Connect the red destruct buttons to a fire cracker and the Identification Friend or Foe to your front porch light !
powerandpassionYes thats the one. Maybe someone on here will recognise them. I’ve always been mystified by them and their purpose. In the shed they were with a load of broken remains, but interestingly the remains were stamped with RAF Kidbrooke, probably shipped over early on with aircraft deliveries and the like…..
Looks like a standard electric motor brake, used in applications such as elevators to rapidly bring an electric motor to a stop, ie when a lift reaches a particular floor. I have seen them used on pre 1960’s mine shaft winch applications and conveyor belt drives to allow precise stop/start of travel. I have never seen a wind generator with one of these mounted. If a wind generator was over charging the accumulator (battery) cut out switch would divert current to earth, and the wind generator could happily windmill on. I cannot imagine a cable arrangement from the cockpit being pulled to apply a brake to a wind generator, it would be unnecessary. It might be logical in a motor powering a bomb lifting winch, where you would want precise stop/start. On an application like a set of mechanical shears for sheep, it may have been used to trim the moustaches of RAF types to a precise pattern….do not put the asbestos brake pads on your weeties for breakfast, bag ’em up, comrades.
No Hector pic displayed.
powerandpassionASI & Vac c0cks
Attached pics of :
Mk IXC ASI Short & Mason No.165/39, 6A/96 marked by brush on face, probably should be 6A/296, AM crown scribed on bakelite case
Vacuum c0cks, grey pair and green pair
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