Great, the British people get an amazing 20% of the value back. Nice to see screwing the taxpayer is alive and well in the department of transport :rolleyes:

Lol @ Prom 🙂 get yourself up here and by the way I’ll be there at Pompey my brother in law ex Argonaught lives there. U know chaps the one thing that I can’t get out of my head is that my father in law was rum bosun on Ganges and Zulu and he told me that in the late 60’s in Malta there were 3 RN carriers in the harbour and now we are struggling to get 2 into service.
How the mighty have fallen. 🙁

Ps Prom the dockyard isn’t classified from 2 miles away lol. I take my pics from a roadside lay-by or near Lord and Lady Hoptouns estate. Basically if u know the area rosyth naval base is visible to all and sundry. But I agree I need greater zoom!!

Indeed, even Faslane and Coulport are available in great quality on Google maps!

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&ll=56.066659,-4.820557&spn=0.000777,0.002411&t=h&z=19&vpsrc=6

I totally wish/dream to do it. The idea is that a friend and I would take a trip into the UK, in time to make it all the way up north to see QE complete and going, to sing Rule Britannia as it comes out of dock!
Plenty of places i want to see in the UK, after all. Gotta visit the tank museum in Bovington and other sweet places, for example. I really hope i’ll be able to take that travel.

“QE wasn’t designed for the LPH role”

Don’t know how far i can agree. It has long been assumed that CVF would have a secondary LPH role, (that now became primary under the “Carrier Enabled Power Projection” concept) and i believe a good number of design solutions kept this in mind.

By the way, MBDA at DSEI was showing Fire Shadow used from ships, and in the video you can see… deck marked “Q”, with… modifications from the QE we know.
For example: no sky jump in sight (and ok so far), what would appear as a new, additional lift in the deck judging by deck markings (weird) and a number of superstructures and a big ass crane mounted aft, making it look almost like Ocean in that area, where the LCAC(L) are usually embarked.

Have a look at it yourselves:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJDJm3eawcM

MOD hypothesis for modifications for improved Amphibious capability? MBDA being imaginative?
Why did they make a video with a QE model like that, when they could have used plenty of graphics already available?

I probably see too much in a simple promotional video, but it is interesting nonetheless.
The most urgent modifications if QE ever gets refitted to better work as Commando carrier, is the addition of RoRo ramps leading into the hangar.
And larger boat recesses with davits for LCVP MK5, if they aren’t already large enough.
It is not exactly clear what kind of ship boats CVF will use, and what kind of accomodation for them she’ll have, is it…?

@CockneyJock

Thanks a bunch for the photos! Always great stuff, pub and minesweeper included!

I went to Bovington as a kid. It’s right by Wool train station near Poole/Bournemouth. It’s easy enough to get from Portsmouth to Bovington by train. You’ll probably have to go via Southampton to get to Bovington anyway. If you go in via London than there are aviation museums around there too, else there is one at the naval air museum at Yeovil.

The ideas in that video don’t seem very good. Having the carrier close enough to make use of fireshadow would be quite risky. The big problems I see with an LHA are lack of hotel facilities for the people.

‘Whereas you can speak a foreign language without making a minor error?’

I can count all the way to 10 in French and swear when I can’t get any further 😎

Terribly sorry that it ‘particularly grates on you’ and as far as myself paying attention,that is exactly what I was doing.

As a keen follower of the progress of CVF since its inception I follow numerous websites and sky jump is not something that I have come across to my recollection.
Then again I am not as prolific a contributor as yourself.

There’s plenty more annoying things on aviation forums than spelling mistakes!

I cant quite see but I think the block is suspended from the crane, certainly the wires are taught but can you leave a 900 ton weight suspended overnight (in high winds). I’m not an engineer so over to the experts for that one.

Liger you may know the answer to this one. For years now we have been told that its 36 JSF + 4 helo’s max capacity but unoffically it could be more. Now Dave B doesn’t have folding wings but Dave C does. In your opinion how many Dave C’s + helo’s do you think you could fit on a CVF now? (all treasury officials look away now)

Ps this is open to everybody, all opinions welcome 🙂

The max really depends on how you want to count it. The 36 figure comes from how sortie rates can be maintained over a given period, which in turn is primarily related to things like fuel, munitions, replenishments ect. The physical capacity whilst still being able to operate aircraft is way higher, but as Liger said this isn’t likely to be a good thing to do in practice. Anyway, for the B variant layout here is a possible maximum potential capacity 🙂

TaranisAttack

The C is harder to judge since I’ve not seen the layout, and they are supposedly modifying the deck too…

btw, MS Paint 😀

The warning siren network doesn’t operate anymore, the last would have ended operation around 1990. Some sirens are used for flood defence warning and nuclear warnings, such as the ones at naval bases at Portsmouth and Plymouth (see link), but they are separate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lnPCN6Bjvk

It seems rather stupid to have dismantled the network, they could certainly save lives in a disaster.

Are u the same ppp that posts on WAFF? If so I used to enjoy your battles with a certain French person.

I am, well I used to be on there, I deleted my account a while back due to the ever diminishing aerospace content. I don’t think Marc would like the talk about CdG being incapable of landing a full F35 😉 It was interesting debating with him in any case, and I’m glad you enjoyed them 🙂

That introductory paragraph to the CVF has been doing the rounds with minor changes for longer than I care to remember.
I’m afraid the RN website is now a rather dumbed down version aimed more at the younger person/potential recruit,I am not trying to be arrogant when I say that it should not be taken as a point of reference for anyone with a serious interest in current/up to date procurement or design as far as RN vessels are concerned.
I would myself put it in the same class as the Navy News,that is a cheery bright MOD mouthpiece.
Before anyone says itI do not mean that in any sort of derogatory manner, but just the way I see it.

Oh I agree about the RN website, but I don’t think it’s just aimed at younger people, but perhaps also “media types” ect. The MoD has an internal defence internet which probably has more information, though I’ve never been on nor seen it, so I can’t really say for sure!

Well i suspect they are aiming towards the SDSR 2015 to revise the CVF status and their goal to convert and utilise both.

To be honest i think the names of the two ships has been both a blessing and a curse, the royal association made it very hard to cancel them completely especially for a Tory led government, then the SDSR 2010 wording tied their hands to one being mothballed or sold off whilst the others i converted and then discovering it wouldn’t be practical to convert QE at this stage of the build. This has left them in somewhat of a catch 22 situation, as they are committed to only one ship, but they can’t have the lead ship named in honour of the queen as a white elephant !!!.

Expect news late next year that PoW will be converted and QE will be used for Sea trials and proving the class and her future will be determined in the SDSR 2015, and then in 2014 when QE is scheduled to be launched they will no doubt pre-empt the SDSR 2015 by confirming QE will be refitted to PoW standard post 2020.

It’s Queen Elizabeth I, not Queen Elizabeth II (“The Queen”), but it could help I suppose. Maybe they should have named it HMS Coalition Policies and the other HMS Economic Recovery 🙂

It could also be one of the ground test articles that was sent to the UK for testing.

Very unlikely though.

Edit. Expect to see lots of Chinese visitors over the next year if it is real 😉

Well it did seem to be very detailed, and so I wondered how informed it was. But it has been updated quite recently with build progress so it should not be out of date, but its reference to which rings constitute the blocks conflicts with the ACA video and that aspect has not changed for a long time

Which means that either Pymes is talking rubbish about the rings, or the ACA video is very out of date. Let’s be honest, the latter is perfectly possible given the rest of their website.

It’s not saying whether he is right or wrong on the issue, I am just saying that he definately knows a lot about naval issues, since he isn’t here 🙂

Tell me about it swerve. Still think we’ll get both with cats and traps, eventually!!

Keeping both would be a good start.