RPM, FF, TGT…Whirlwind XP358
Lauriebe,
If you have records for Whirlwinds in Borneo (which I would love to see, if it is a website, please post the .url…) check against XP358 and tell me what you see….. It might be interesting reading because I was on that Whirlwind when it became “a deceased Whirlwind”…..on a hillside in Sabah near Kota Belud.
While I was there 1966-1968, 110 Squadron lost three to my count. Mine in Sabah, one on a hilltop which lost a tailrotor near Tring doing Trig Work for the Army. This one landed back on the hill and nearly gave the crewman something exciting in the rear (!) and one which force landed on a gravel bank in sunny weather in 3rd Division Sarawak. That one suffered because it started to rain…..Oh dear, when they were picked up the crew and a pregnant Iban lady were lying on the rotor blades.
“Know your enemy”… the Bristol Gnome…and other things…
RPM, Fuel Flow, TGT…
http://www.electranewbritain.com
RPM, FF, TGT…This photo should bring back a memory or two then.
Lauriebe,
Yes, it does….. the chute or chutes in question that CAC in MEL were manufacturing is the one under the Ejector Seat Triangular sign…the Stainless Steel chute that has two vertical slots in it which I think is the feeder chute and the curved one just aft of it which could be the ejector chute.
CAC were building up a spares pack for each “export” and lots of bits came through the Inspection department. After the Sabre bits were exhausted, I then went onto the Bell 206B-1 (Aust) being made there at Fishermen’s Bend.
RPM, Fuel Flow, TGT…
http://www.electranewbritain.com
RPM, FF, TGT…XR480 & Sing leaving Malaysia
David,
I have XR479 and XR 481 in my logbook a few times as being flown by 110 Squadron but no XR480…. I suspect that XR480 was being prepared to go to the SAR Flight at Butterworth and that’s why it was partial dayglo.
Yes, the Tunku wanted too much allegiance from the mainly Chinese on Singapore and Mr. Lee could foresee the powerhouse supplying most of the current for the lights in Malaysia !
As helicopter crewmen we did fly most times sat on the sill but wearing a monkey harness. As Flight Engineers posted onto helicopters we mostly hated the job and wanted nothing more than to get back onto four-engines.
Two Groundcrew (and the pilot) had been killed on a 103 Squadon flight out of Kuching which strayed over the border on a re-supply run to a forward post. He missed the post and flew on and was bracketted by two of those multi-barrelled 20mm cannon things on wheels. Questions were asked in the house as to why Groundcrew had been flying on an “aircrew” task and the R.A.F. had no answer. Groundcrew flew regularly at first in order to keep the beasts serviceable in the field.
The R.A.F. had to ask, “Who do we have who are ‘technical’ and who are aircrew….Ahhh ! the Flight Engineers….” Whammo.. off 4-engines and onto whining, groaning, air beaters…. I was off 4-engines in 1965 and didn’t get back onto the Argosy until 1968.
RPM, Fuel Flow, TGT…
http://www.electranewbritain
RPM, FF, TGT…Aussie Sabres going to the Indons….
Lauriebe:
Quite correct. I could not believe it when I arrived in Australia… I emigrated in 1973 after leaving the R.A.F. ……
My first job was at the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation at Fisherman’s Bend in Melbourne. The were building Bell 206B-1(Aust) helicopters at the time (basically military JetRangers) and despite my expectancy of working on those (which I had been told I was to do) I was placed in the Quality Inspection Department. Later I did the QA Flight Testing side of those Bell’s and some of them are still flying today.
The very first job I had at C.A.C. was inspecting stainless steel cannon shell ejector shutes for the N.A Sabres…. Years previously I had visited Williamtown AB on a trip from SIN in 1962 and exclaimed that I was not aware that Australia still had Sabres….
The answer from one of the guys in the Inspection Department was a laconic “….Naw, mate, we give ’em to the Indons so the **********s kin floi ’em en attack Daarwin any taim they chuse…” Great… I just thanked providence that they hadn’t had them earlier to use against us in Borneo.
So those “beautiful” Sabres had ended up in Indonesia.
“Sabre itu rusak Tuan”
RPM, Fuel Flow, TGT…
http://www.electranewbritain.com
RPM, FF, TGT…Indonesian Hercules loss…
David Taylor asks about Indon Herc losses…..incidentally, David, excellent photos you post ! …
The Ghurkas had a strongpoint at Ba Kelalan in Sarawak which on Google Earth is shown as being 1 Mile from the border with Kalimantan. The Lat/Long is 3D 58’N, 115D 37’E. They were so close to the border that they lived undergound on rising ground overlooking the border. There was not much to see of the camp from the air. Ba Kelalan was eight miles from an Indon airstrip over the border at Long Bawan, which is South-East of Ba Kelalan. On a clear day you could see Long Bawan as you went flying past the border in that area.
Ba Kelalan was re-supplied from Labuan and possibly the Navy with Wessex and 230 Squadron Whirlwinds had been doing the job before we on 110 Squadron Whirlwinds moved from Sarawak 3rd Division (Sibu and Nanga Gaat) to Labuan and Bario and took over the re-supply of the bases in that area around the back-end of 1966. 230 Squadron were moving back to the U.K..
It was said to me that a Hercules had left Long Bawan early one morning with paras on board and had headed towards Ba Kelalan and had been hit by GPMG fire from the alert Ghurkas at Ba Kelalan and was seen to turn back for Long Bawan streaming smoke and had crash-landed there and burnt out.
That then would be the second one in addition to the one with the Javelin (which I did not know about).
RPM, FF, TGT…
http://www.electranewbritain.com
RPM, FF, TGT…100 to 200 series engines
Pogno,
If that is correct, then BEA invalidated the airworthiness certification of the aircraft model, the 200 Series. You just cannot remove a certificated aircraft engine (of a certain power value) and put a lower powered engine in place of it. I am sure that BEA would not do that. For the following explanation reasons…..
In doing so, not only do you invalidate the first aircraft “Type Certificate”, you also invalidate the second aircraft (Viscounts) “Type Certificate” that the higher powered engines are going to….
You find the same power differences with civilian aircraft also, the Fokker F28 being a good example in that the RR Spey engines on the F28-1000 Series needed “tweaking” to be able to be fitted to the F28-4000 Series and vice-versa, ie: the -4000 variant Speys had to be de-rated when fitted to the -1000 Series in order to stay within the Certification parameters.
I am only familiar with the Argosy RR Dart military engines and I was away from them for three years, in which time the Cruise settings of 14200 rpm, 730 degrees TGT had been uprated to 14500rpm, 785 degrees TGT. Big change….. which was called for after the lacklustre perfomance of the RR Dart in the Middle East and Far East.
It was my understanding that the “military” Dart engine had an uprated turbine assembly for “Hot and High” conditions….which (my understanding again) was applicable to what the R.A.F. wanted, not what BEA wanted. If there is a RR Dart expert out there, please chip in…. Whether this “new turbine” also applied to BEA’s Darts is another question.
Maybe BEA also had to “fiddle” around with Fuel Control Unit (FCU) settings if they wished to interchange Darts between 100 Series and 200 Series aircraft.
RPM, Fuel Flow, TGT…
http://www.electranewbritain.com
RPM, FF, TGT…I have a photo somewhere – a close-up of the tail of a Riddle Argosy with “Katie the kangaroo” on it. In Katie’s pouch is a very large/prominent stick with fuse marked “T.N.T.” – I have often wondered if there was any connection between Riddle and the world-wide TNT transport company?
TNT = “Tonight Not Tomorrow” (as well as whatever the chemical name is for the explosive)Roger Smith.
Roger,
Weren’t RIDDLE involved in carting large flammatory objects like rocket boosters around for the space programme ? What better symbol (or in modern terms “logo”) could there be than a bounding Kangaroo taking explosive stuff from one site to another. A cartoonist would understand the satire in the depiction of a stick of TNT “ready to blow”….
RPM, Fuel Flow, TGT…
http://www.electranewbritain.com
RPM, FF, TGT…Air drops gone wrong… Long Jawi sometime in 1966…
Not Argosy but shows what can go wrong.
Yes, just watched that and it reminded me of Borneo and at a place called Long Jawi…. two stories…
1. A Beverley airdrop onto the “A” missed the DZ entirely and went through the roof of the longhouse at Long Jawi and narrowly missed a supposed paraplegic who (I am laughing while I type this…) had laid on his kip for some time (years) being waited on hand and foot….. The MSP (Medium Stressed Platform – 2 Tons) went straight through the roof and the paraplegic was last seen running into the jungle. I suppose there are false benefit claimers in all walks of life, even in the Borneo Jungle…!!!
I didn’t witness the above example but I certainly did see this “No. 2″….
2. 110 Squadron on the day had positioned two Whirlwinds at Long Jawi ready for a re-supply run up to the Sarawak/Kalimantan border but the supply drop was late. Long Jawi was in a river valley and we positioned the choppers well up on the side of the slopes out of the way of the “A” (just in case….).
When the drop packs used to be made up, the Ice-cream always went on last, at the top of the packs. We didn’t know when we got there at Long Jawi that the Beverley had gone U/S at Kuching but the MSP’s had already been positioned at the apron ready for loading at Kuching, had been loaded, and been taken off again…. but the frozen Ice-cream had already been stuck there on the top of the MSP’s.
Long Jawi was remote and the Ghurkas based there were waiting “eagerly” for the Stores and Ice-Cream that they knew would be coming in on the airdrop.
The Beverley after an hour or so was declared serviceable again and the Supply (ie: Catering) stuck some flat boxes of Baked Beans on top of the Ice-cream and the Beverley departed for Long Jawi which would be about 2 hours away from Kuching.
The upshot was that as I watched (from a safe distance up the side of the hill – “Chicken Me”) the Beverley approached on his run-in which seemed O.K., as I’d watched these drops before….MSP’s always came out in singles… 1-Ton platforms would come out in multiples…. Anyway, he dropped the first one which landed close to the “A”.
As usual the Ghurkas who always stood in a leaning attitude in a large circle, poised to race in; they raced in, stripped the platforms, threw the boxes into a Landrover and waited for the next MSP. The eager looks on their faces had to be seen to be believed, believe me…
Round the cicuit went the Beverley, rolled out of the turn close in and dropped the second MSP… which candled…. Oh, dear….
One shute opened, the other two did not, so the MSP is hurtling to the ground, off the “A” and the Ghurkas race in to be enveloped in a circular horizontal sheet of now liquid Ice-cream which hits all of them at belt height as the Baked Beans crush the Ice-cream packets. Well, you have never seen anything like it in your life ! Grinning and laughing Ghurkas, wiping their trousers and shirts, white with melted Ice-cream, licking their fingers and rolling around on the ground in hysterics.
One of the more pleasurable and very happier moments from a little known but very dirty little conflict.
RPM, Fuel Flow, TGT…
http://www.electranewbritain.com
RPM, FF, TGT…Did the RAF want the Argosy ?
Mr. Creosote:
Bit of a moot point there…
The Herc would have meant an “American” buy when Britain had lost the race for a jet airliner to Boeing when the Comet had the structural failure, so it might not have been politically expedient for a large order on Lockheed when British jobs were at stake, particularly in the Midlands areas, the ‘hotbed’ of unionism.
In medium range there was a gap. The medium range Hastings were getting old (WWII design) and the Beverley was short range. The Comets and Britannia provided the long range logistics to cover what was left of the “Empire” with Honkers being the furthest bastion…..
AWA weren’t selling the Argosy successfully in Civilian guise even though the ro-ro was a good idea, the competition was the cheaper Carvairs.
Probably to save jobs and provide a bridge between the Hastings and a good successor, the military Argosy came into play.
As for the crews on the Argosy, my opinion says they were liked. As I said before, it was a gentleman’s aircraft, couldn’t fly far fully loaded and trips to the Med, Norway, N.Africa & the Middle East took days, not hours, but then, that was the style ! These days with Jet Transports no chance for a nightstop in Bodo or Bergen, Berlin or Bathurst. On the Argosy you got to enjoy yourself in a few out of the way places !
I’ll search out one of my old logs to give some actual figures for a couple of flights, but from recall, in simple figures:
The basic operating weight was 57,000lbs,
Full fuel was 33,280lbs,
Max. AUW was 97,000lbs,
That left only 6720lbs for freight, a mere 3 Tons.
Benson to Istres-le-Tube was 2:50.
Istres to Luqa was 3:15 Nightstop.
Luqa to Akrotiri was 4:30 Nightstop.
Then the same for the return making the whole round trip around the 21 Hour flight time mark, with three nightstops, what an easy life !!!
RPM, Fuel Flow, TGT…
http://www.electranewbritain.com
RPM, FF, TGT…RPM,FF,TGT, Hi,
It would seem that these two were not the same thing. Proj Scillonia flights almost certainly mounted from St Mawgan. That’s where the boffins and the met satellite Rx were located; with the radar on St Mary’s a/f in the Scillies.
HTH
Resmoroh
Resmoroh,
Thanks for response. I forgot to repeat in the post I put up that we were at low level anyway, so it could not have been for the Scillonia project… and we were way off to the West of Ireland after three hours…..on the first trip anyway. My memory is hazy about the second flight. Then, if not Scillonia, what the heck was it ? Nobody was saying anything. I still come up with tracking the “phishing fleet” as it was well known that Shacks very often lost their trailing aerials over the radio vessel and there had to be a better way of silencing them in their snooping.
Like a splinter, I suppose one day it will come out !
RPM, Fuel Flow, TGT…
http://www.electranewbritain.com
RPM, FF, TGT…XP 447 and the extra TIT….
Frank,
On the inside view of ex-XP447 the toilet door (at least) is still in place and it did have about a 6 inch step “up” to get into it, so I can’t hazard a guess “why this C/N has the extra front supply dropper’s window and is a mystery that seemingly only Hercule Poirot would solve. Maybe the proposed user was a…. oops can’t say that anymore. Maybe the proposed supply dropper was small person. Maybe they needed a witness in case they aimed for the target and dropped on a Police Station or something. The answer will lie in the reason why they bought the aircraft in the U.S. in the first place. Para Dropping ? No, too expensive to run….
On XR137… was that taken at Cottesmore ? If so, 115 may have been tasked with super-duper high definition radar reception from some ground installations. Looks like that one might have had to forgo the LOX tank as well….!!! I can see the small person Radar Boffin sat behind the tit with the green glow all over his face !! As for the LOX tank, I can count the number of times we went on O2 on one finger I think…rarely did you get above 15,000 feet and have to put the third blower in.
RPM, Fuel Flow, TGT…
http://www.electranewbritain.com
RPM, FF, TGT…Double window at the front…
Frank,
To do that modification on the military Argosy the LOX tank would have to come out and the Toilet would have to be moved… why would they do that, doesn’t make sense.
RPM, Fuel Flow, TGT…
http://www.electranewbritain.com
RPM, FF, TGT…“The little round door with the window above it…”
The door dropped down and was held in place by a strap. It was hinged at the at end and would have been of little use in the event of a bale out. ( yes we did wear parachutes when performing some tasks).
In the event of a wheels up landing it would not have been feasable to
try to escape from there rather better to just open a side door and walk out.
Despite having flown for hundreds of hours on the Argosy I can honestly
say that I have no idea why that door was there. I DO know what was
on the other side of it however but that wasn’t the question.
Mally,
Yes, “The little round door with the window above it” was the Crew Door and a more awkward aircraft door I have never come across. It alone is reason enough for all the bad backs amongst ex-Argosy crews.
When she was loaded with MSP’s (Medium Stressed Platforms) or even a string of “One-ton platforms” if you entered from the back through the open beaver tail doors to get to the flight deck you had to scamble over the edges of the roller conveyor on the floor and would be hanging onto the nets and the packs on the platforms, so when the beast was so loaded (and most times anyway), you entered through the nose door. It would be impractical to open the side para-dropping doors as they opened inwards towards the platforms and then slid back.
This entry through the nose door entailed “assuming a position”, swinging your bags in a semi-crouched attitude and throwing them inside onto the freight bay floor where someone else from the crew would shove them aside ready for the next bag. Then you’d bend down and get in yourself.
Nav’s were always a bit queasy about lying across the front door while supply dropping, they used a padded board acrose the well in the inside surface of the door and then guided the pilot over the DZ from there. At other times, spectacular views could be had through the plate glass when in cruise
Dropping the platforms was I recall, at about 120 Knots with take-off flap, rear doors open (of course) and heaps of power, the Argosy would be in a nose high attitude and some pilots would raise their seats up a notch or two. Weston-on-the-Green DZ was where most drops and drop training took place. The aircraft would do a big lurch taildown as the huge C.G. shift occurred when the last of the platforms went past the C.G. point and more power would be applied at that moment and the stick shoved forward. Could be somewhat alarming and sometimes terrifying…..
RPM, Fuel Flow, TGT…
http://www.electranewbritain.com
RPM, FF, TGT…S.V.E. TRials….
Let it not be forgotten that Argosy’s (or, at least, one) was involved in Project Scillonia. ……One Argosy had a plywood(?) bulkhead built just forrard of the aft doors. This bulkhead had a door in it giving access from the main freight compartment to the rear sill. HTH
Resmoroh
Resmoroh,
Reference “…chucking things out the back…”
I’ve just had a look in my log book. On Feb 25th and Mar 2nd 1971, it says that I did two separate flights from Cottesmore each being for 6 Hours and 15 minutes for “S.V.E. Trials” & it looks like our call sign for both was “Charlie Oscar India 01”. Would those dates fit the Radio Sonde flights you are talking about ?
For both flights the airframe was XN821 which was one of the old ones from the OCU’s at Benson and Thorney but I can’t recall a ply bulkhead at the back and I can’t recall there being a Loadmaster or AQM on board either as I do remember going down to make a cup of coffee myself….. maybe these were the first flights before the aircraft was “properly” fitted out for the role.
Captains were Flt.Lt. Pritchard, for the first one, with a co-pilot both of whom I had never seen before and the second flight was with one of our Benson Pilots as Captain, F.O. Noon.
RPM, Fuel Flow, TGT…
http://www.electranewbritain.com
RPM, FF, TGT…DC-3 Wing at Mendi
Jim,
Try the following forum thread on the http://www.pprune.org forum:
Go to “Dunnunda & Godzone”, which is concerned with Australian & New Zealand flying but also includes PNG Aviation….
Then Go to “D & G General Aviation & Questions”
Then look for: “PNG Ples bilong tok-tok” which is staffed by tens of old hands from PNG aviation and I’m sure one of them will know exactly what you are asking.
Rgds
RPM, FF, TGT…
http://www.electranewbritain.com
Sign In
