In theory you’re right Mike, but…

I think it was Stanley Hooker recalled Whittle saying to Lord Hives how simple the turbojet was. Hives’ response was “don’t worry, we’ll soon change that” or similar.

Given time to have a good look at a large radial and all the associated pipery, I could probably come up with a fair guess about what a good number of them do. Having seen a picture of a Vulcan Olympus somewhere recently, a very old engine design liberally festooned with pipes, I haven’t a clue what any of them are for.

Updated again today. The crankshaft bearing on the new No 1 engine has failed again.

http://www.sallyb.org.uk/index.php?_a=viewDoc&docId=15

As far as i am aware the present systems vis a vis US/UK were agreed upon in 1958…prior to that there was a slight difference,but engineering drawings are very precise by nature so ‘close enough for government work’ is not necessarily good enough for building an aircraft,as S63 said …there also was a big change to american fasteners which (hopefully) got rid of the plethora of ancient brit threads etc…personally I love working with A/F or metric sizes and happily swap between either,but also have not forgotten Whit,BS,BSF,BSP or BA sizes 😀

regards baz

I was certainly partly right, we use 1st angle projection and 3rd angle is standard in America. Fasteners obviously makes sense. I’ve still got Whit/BSF spanners around but it would take a while to get used to them again.

I can’t find anything that states for certain what the difference was before 1958 but the best I’ve found says the Imperial Standard Yard was made slightly larger to match the International Yard. The difference appears to be of the order of 1.5 thousandths of a millimetre over a yard. Probably near enough for building aeroplanes. 🙂

Still nothing intelligent to add about Canberras…

I know virtually nothing in depth about Canberras so the link posted by Bager1968 was useful and very detailed.

http://www.vectorsite.net/avcanbra.html

One very minor point mentioned jumped out at me: “plans flown from the UK to be converted from Imperial to metric measurements”.

Seems unlikely, any comments?

Easy – an inch square nut.

😀

The MB5 was certainly very well tested. “A most secret place : Boscombe Down, 1939-45” by Brian Johnson and Terry Heffernan contains the report on the MB5. They accept it was overtaken by turbine developments but still considered it was worth doing a full appraisal.

It’s positively effusive, especially bearing in mind the dry officialese that reports like these are usually written in.

The email I had from Cosford a couple of years ago said they were changing their catering contractors. I haven’t been since so I don’t know if they have.

Elvington used to be a cut above until, presumably, the bean counters got to work. Like Cosford, they replaced the old biddy wielding a gigantic teapot with a gleaming machine that dispensed an indefinable brown liquid.