A family friend who is now an Old, Bold pilot described his wheels up at Valley sometime in the late 50s/60s.

He said as the aircraft sank lower, more and more noise was generated until it peaked, as he was sliding along with everything in contact.

With great feeling he stressed that when it stopped and all was silent – do not immediately get out – just sit and savour the silence – as it will be the last you will hear for months as every armchair expert from the Groupie to the mess cat will insist you listen to their view of what you should have done.

Ross

Spot on! Whatever all these pundits might say, this pilot has funded, rebuilt and flown a bunch of aeroplanes we never will.

…Or [email]info@keepthemflying.co.uk[/email]

Hello Jan,

There is quite a lot of information on the aircraft in Arthur Ord-Hume’s book “On Home Made Wings” and I am sure that Arthur can add further to his published knowledge as he helped rebuild and develop the aeroplane when the original design proved unsuccessful.

The book can be bought direct from the author at
aeromusic @ archive1.demon.co.uk.

(Please cut and paste Arthur’s address, closing the gaps each side of the @ – we are doing this to prevent inundations of ‘spam’).

I think the reason was firstly, relatively few (about 320) DR-1s were built and that given the challenges of transporting “war booty”, there were more useful airframes, such as Fokker D-VIIs which the allied forces were much more interested in learning about.

By the end of 1918, the DR-1 was pretty much obsolete, had a record of wing structural failures and it had been a struggle to keep Oberursel rotary engines running on the poor quality fuel and oil available just before the Armistice.

It seems only two examples were even preserved in Germany. 528/17 was kept as a testbed for the German Aviation Research Institute at Adlershof, one of the few ex-Military aircraft allowed to be kept flying after the Armistice. It is thought to have been wrecked in an accident somewhere between 1937 or 38.

Serial 152/17, one of Manfred von Richthofen’s aircraft, was kept at the Zeughaus museum in the old Berlin arsenal building. It was destroyed during allied bombing in 1944-45.

A good question…

I was sent them a few years ago with no provenance. They could well be from an earlier thread as they were forwarded by another forum regular… 😉

Words are superfluous……

For those flying in: the VAC Event phone number: 07731 991545 is operational for the 24 hours prior to any event and will remain on until the event finishes.

Old Sarum airfield information is also available at http://www.oldsarumairfield.co.uk and on 01722 322 525.