D Day Squadron statement:

http://ddaysquadron.org/d-day-squadron-responds-to-current-events-surrounding-european-commemorations/

Yup, the Dakota owners & parachutists etc have no blame in any of this. It’s all on the shoulders of one man..

Brauns miracle recovery from a heart attack has now been compounded by his claim he also suffered a “complete mental breakdown”. From the post I saw, it appears this happened as he walked out of the hospital.

Can’t see that unless you have a Facebook account ZRX – anyone care to share the gist?

The basic gist is:
It’s rapidly becoming apparent that the whole deal in France organised by Braun was a scam from the start. All those photo flights he sold in T6’s were illegal, There were never any NOTAMs filed, He didn’t bother asking the tower to open at 7am instead of 9am. No permits etc. It appears all he did was collect money & lie to everyone. There’s a LOT of people very angry over all this & Braun has dropped off the radar.

& now the displeasure has spilled over on the Berlin Airlift 70 FaceBook page (another Braun deal) with people there bringing up that he owes refunds for the DoN fiasco… However, given that this event is taking place in Germany, I expect the level of competency will be a lot higher…

Interestingly, I posted on the DON Fb page about half an hour ago asking if anyone had heard anything since Saturday. No reply as yet and the last email I received from Jo was also sent by her on Saturday.

Last post from Jo was 16 hours ago:

Daks over Normandy Please note that I am no longer the Social Media Manager for Daks over Normandy. I will continue to answer emails and forward them to the relevant people but it is not me on this page or Twitter. Thanks everyone for your kind words to me. Jo

Edited:

The DoN volunteer (Jo) who was helping people with complaints & info about refunds etc “has gone back to her regular job” & is no longer posting on their FB page or twitter “under the DoN user name”.

You see, I was there, I made the documentary, I even pulled a prop through with everyone else and I still wondered why Paul in the right seat said that! You live and learn. I believe he’s actually counting the turns on the starter as opposed to hand turns I think, but had no idea what the counting was. Included it as it was a nice sequence.

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You still count the blades when spinning them over with the starter, it just happens quicker. Also count blades on Merlins, but that has to do with fuel priming & when to turn the mags on. Merlins are surprisingly easy to start. Next time you’re filming around a P51, ask if they will let you fire it up when needed. The only difference is some people give the primer a 3 second squirt & some give it 3 quick squirts. The latter works for me.

I’m sure someone with greater knowledge will be along to clarify, but if I remember rightly some later-spec radials have a kind of clutch on the starter mechanism that disengages the starter if hydraulic lock is encountered. The R-3350’s on DC-7’s, C97’s etc had these fitted and I wonder if some warbirds have had a similar system retro-fitted?

The 3350 engined SeaFury I worked on had this feature.

On the former TFC F7F we fitted scavenge pumps & gate valves to get the oil out after shutdown & keep it out. Also wired it so that the valves had to be opened before you could spin the starter to prevent the meat servo’s from firing it up with no oil supply… Switches to open the valves were in one of the gear wells next to the pre oiler switches etc. Always fun to watch from the crowd line/ VIP tent as a pilot would get all strapped in & then have to get out again to open the valves. They only did that once. 🙂

scavenge & pre-oil pumps:

gate valve: