That would have been the nose wheel steering bypass pin.

Aha that makes sense, thanks!

It shouldn’t smirky, you have weight on micro switches on the gear that in effect isolate various systems whilst on the ground, one being the retraction system. You can find details of the incident and a lucky escape for one of the see off crew.

That is amazing and lucky no one was killed. (I now remember seeing the ground locks in place when under the Vulcan at Newark!)

Is it a common design practice for it to be geometrically possible to retract the gear with weight on it, instead relying on microswitches etc.as a safety system?

Last time at an airport I saw the ground crew install something in the nose wheel bay attached to a big red streamer which they removed and showed to the pilot before pushing back – would this have been a safety pin on the nose gear?

Wessex HAS1 XP158

This is my new project, looking well-used after at least 5 years outside but has the dataplate which identifies it as WA91 and therefore XP158 :cool:. An early (single engined) Wessex that was never converted to HAS3 standard but instead retired to the SAR role.

As far as I can discover, XP158 was delivered in 1963, displayed in yellow/blue with torpedoes in 1968 marked as 72, retasked to SAR visited Malta with Ark Royal 1974 marked 047 then to Culdrose marked 522, took part in the Silver Jubilee fleet review 1977 and retired to static duties in 1979. Apart from that I have no idea – is there a way of finding out if it was embarked on Centaur, Hermes etc.? Also it appears that there was another 047 on Ark Royal in the 1970s so I am a bit confused.

The centre backlit panel is missing as are the eyebrow lights on the left and right ends.

The tattier dials are original. I have done a bit of hole-stuffing so some of the dials are not exactly right at the moment, but I don’t see this ever reaching showroom condition.:D

Cool, is it part of a larger project – any chance of a picture?

They look nicely made, could they be for harmonising the guns?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/141212112910

Wouldn’t normally take them with you but the Swiss probably operated in a more dispersed way.

FM=Fairey …..

The 2 BA csk screws are one inch and the spacers are half inch (8 required) – based on experiment. 🙂

2 BA brass screws went into the prevailing torque nuts on my AH & DI without apparent damage.

I did wonder about that. As Smirky pointed out, it needs spacers. However my wartime book *does* actually give a panel cut-out hole including the corner missing for the zeroing mechanism to sit in.

I did say that but then looked at the actual panel and corrected it as the VSI is in fact flush to the rear of the panel. The older ones have a knob rather than the grub screw so that would need a cutout.