I have an aircraft wheel which I’m told is post war and British,but so far no one has any firm info on what type it is from.
Garry.

A picture may help.

Never heard of this happening before. Glad they got down safe.

FlyBe no doubt.:D

Whatever airline it was, how irresponsible! Do they not appreciate that there is a current shortage of bees.;)

Guess this is the one you are thinking of, D-ABZY!:D

http://www.airliners.net/discussions/general_aviation/read.main/1415398/

Ouch!:eek:

Shows how comparatively fragile civil jets are.

Regrettably my 100-300 lens is unserviceable, so the camera is unusuitable for aviation photography any longer, and I don’t intend spending any more money on it. I have two smaller lenses, so the camera will be fine for portraits and such.

Have you considered looking at second hand. I have noticed a number of Minolta zooms in the 75-300mm range recently. Indeed I picked up a very useful Sigma EX of that range with a proper Macro feature for under a ton recently. Yes I have read as far as your satement about finances and have genuine empathy by being in a similar boat. Lack of shooting oportunities by not being able to drive myself around anymore frustrate me.

I also picked up a second hand Minolta f8 Reflex 500 which on the Sony Alpha or Dynax 7D is brilliant as I no longer have the physical strength to aim the monstrous 50-500mm zoom all over the sky.

I have to save carefully to be able to take advantage of these second hand offerings and this is why I have not given in and moved to Canon or Nikon. It is a shame that Minolta are out of the picture as IMHO (with the exception of the size of range of lenses) they produced better kit.

Incidentally, I started taking photographs in about 1974 – with a Zorki 4K- click. I doubt you’ll find anything from that period that requires as much attention to take pictures, as that does. The Minolta could never surpass the quality of photographs I took with that…

That Zorki is one interesting looking camera. I started in 1967 with a cheap Halina 35mm with an unreliable built in light meter (I soon bought a Weston Master V which I still have) and fixed lens, there are two shots on my web site taken with this, Simons Sircus and Hunter T8s + Bucc’ and Harvard on the line at Heron Flight in 68.

Then in 68 I purchased my first SRT101 – brilliant for its day, better than any Canon at that time and I still have one which works OK, also an X700.

Whether an aircraft weighs 100 tons or 40 tons it makes little difference when it falls on your head.

Consider the situation at sea on a carrier where jacking heavy jets is a matter of routine, and yes the undercarriage does make a racket when it houses.

More worrying than jacking an F4K at sea was carrying out the nose-undercarriage leg emergency shrink test, where pneumatics were used in place of the normal hydraulic method.

For this most lashings had to be removed because of the amount of rotation and the violance of the movement as the leg shrank. The guy in the cockpit, to operate the selector, was instructed to close the canopies – to prevent the mechanism sheering and him being ejected from the cockpit. The leg shrank so rapidly that the nose of the A/C appeared suspended in the air for a moment. Then gravity took charge and the nose would come down contacting the deck with force enough to lift the main wheels off the deck, sometimes over the chocks.

At sea, in a cramped hangar this was always ‘fun’.:D

I visited Lee-on-Solent for the first time yesterday and thought of that very incident. I didn’t come across any traffic lights though 😉

It often comes to my mind for it was the aircraft that I alluded to in that earlier post. I had strapped the pilot in and signalled start (first cartridge :)) then waved him out with the customary salute.

I had a grilling at the Board of Enquiry but after a few months with nagging worries, although I had nothing that I knew I should have worried about, at least the canopy cleared I having caried out the jettison checks that very morning, but one always wonders on these occasions.

All ‘the Board’ asked me about was the take off and my views as to how it compared with others I had watched and at what points, by line of sight, rotation first took place and then where the aircraft was when I heard the engine wind down and the nosewheel drop to the runway.

Just off the top of my head…

…GA.11 XE685

I put the Harley light in the nose of that back in the 1970s also her near sister XE689.

Hunter much preferred for working to either the Sea Vixen or Phantom which could be brutes at times.

Although the Hunter could have its interesting moments like the one I fixed a Harley light to and looked after and readied for its return flight to Yeovilton but the pilot aborted the take off and it splashed into the Solent.

Then there was the time when a CPO on Heron Flight had fun on an engine start. I was working mostly on the Hunters on the flight at the time and this particular T8 had returned from a sortie and been snagged for engine vibration (there had been an ‘interesting’ situation developing with the engine’s turbine at that time).

The aircraft had just been refuelled so the cut down forty-gallon drum on a small wheeled trolley used to collect overflows was still under the aircraft. I was walking out of the hanger towards the aircraft with a brace of CO2 extinguishers in my hands when, having watched the CPO’s head bobbing about as he did a cockpit check, I was horrified to see, and hear, the cartridge starter in action as the start button was operated by Chieffie in cockpit.

The cartridge exhaust dumped straight into the fuel bin vapourising the fuel and with the engine winding up a cloud of fuel vapour was drawn quickly forward straight down the intakes. By this time I was frantically signalling a cut but Chieffie was clearly too occupied by his astonishment at the JPT gauge suddenly registering a higher than normal value at that point in the start cycle.

Fortunately the quantity of fuel in the bin had absorbed all the heat in the starter exhaust and there was no fire.

Just one of many tales of fun and games.