Carvairs and Freighters

Like many of you in the UK I too grew up with Carvairs and Bristol Freighters flying around. Ansett Airlines flew several Carvairs in Australia and they often flew over my secondary school. I last saw these aircraft at Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne during the mid 1970’s when they were stored awaiting sale. The Freighters were operated by Air Express out of Essendon Airport. One crashed into Bass Strait while returning from Tasmania and another was burned for fire fighting practice at Tullamarine. The remaining two were preserved. A Mk21 is now with the RAAF Museum at Point Cook. It had an RAAF history before operating with Air Express. A Mk31 which served with the Pakistan Air Force before its service with Air Express is now displayed at the Moorabbin Air Museum. Both are displayed in the open. They might be smaller than a Carvair but they’re still huge.

Keith Gaff

Surviving Prototypes

One surviving prototype, here in Australia, that many forget and some would like to is the AA10 Wamira trainer which is now in the collection of the RAAF Museum at Point Cook. It was the only example built and was never flown, nor finally completed before it lost out to the Pilatus PC 9.

Farborough Air Show

I too was at Farnborough in 1974 and the thing I remember most was the poor weather. Not only did the SR 71 turn up; there was an F 15, the Bae Hawk prototype and an S3A Viking. One notable exception was the Panavia MRCA later named the Tornado of course. I will post a few of my images.

Regards,

Keith Gaff

Blue Hurricane

Here’s a rather nice colour picture of the aircraft. This is the last Hurricane ever built and the blue finish was Hawkers house colours. Other vintage aircraft in the Hawker stable at that time were painted in the same shade. When competing in the Kings Cup Races it represented Princess Margaret. Today the Hurricane flies with the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.

Regards,

Keith Gaff

RAAF Museum Mustang grounded

The Mustang has been grounded for several reasons not the least of which is metal fragments in the oil filter screens. A new/overhauled Merlin will be very expensive. The bird certainly won’t be flying for this Sunday’s Air Pageant at Point Cook, but there will be other Mustangs there I’m sure.

Keith Gaff

A real epic of aircraft restoration is the Royal Australian Air Force Museums Supermarine Seagull V, rebuilt from a corroded and battered hulk retrieved from Herd Island in the Antarctic an now on display at the RAAF Museum at Point Cook.

Copyright

Bush lawyer Mark, how original.

If one actually kept up with the law rather than reproducing slabs of legislation off the internet one would know that the Copyright Council of Australia currently considers that if there is loss loss incurred by the unauthorized use of copyright material then there is no breach of copyright.

Taking out an injunction when you have not suffered a loss and assuming a court would grant one; seems like an absolute waste of money that achieves what ???? Stop Uncle Heinrich’s Fw190 pics from be plastered all over the internet. There’s a pressing issue confronting the human race.

As for reproduction rights, James; under Copyright Law there is the section on Fair Dealing which states that 10% of any given work may be reproduced without authority for the purposes of research or review. One could argue that posting on this forum is a form of research. You should attribute the author/artist/photographer but if for some reason you don’t the remedy available to the originator of the work is an apology.

Unless one is foolish enough to play chicken with the Disney Corporation or whatever your chances of being sued are about the same as mine of winning the lottery.

Regards,

Keith Gaff