Hi

Attached is what might get you to rib 17 just for your information. While I’m not suggesting that you are planning to have the part unwrapped, I had a situation where I wanted to unwrap a crushed part of a Stirling that I am interested in personally. While I wanted to leave it ‘as is’, I still wanted to know what part of the aircraft the part was from. So taking a piece of card I pushed, inserted and wrapped it around the flat parts such that the card followed the metal in its crushed shape. At the same time I trimmed the card to the outline. I also marked the rivet holes and fold lines. Attached is what I got when I extracted and unfolded the card and I believe that I found the bracket that it would have been before the crash.

Cheers

James

Hi

3297 parts are stated as ‘Main Plane’

Cheers

James

Hi Oralcal

I know now that the Stirling was heard to pass over the tower and I assume that he had got his bearing from seeing the runway and was flying away to make a 180 degree turn. That turn appears to have taken place just past Dry Drayton. Given that the aircraft was pointing towards the airfield when it crashed it does seem that he was simply too low and hit trees. From the met office reports the weather would have been clear, I can’t remember if there was a moon or not. I’ve seen that trees just look black at night so it doesn’t seem unlikely that he didn’t see them. He had two altimeters – possibly he hadn’t adjusted for local pressure but I believe that the pressure hadn’t changed much since take off. He could have put on his wing light which would have lit up the trees but if you thought you were at 1000 feet that would seem a silly thing to do. The crash was 3 miles from the runway, at 400mph that would be about 30 seconds-ish so should he have been at the approach hieght which I think was usually 1000 ft. I have to say I’m running on my memory only here, so take all this with a grain of salt!

Cheers

James

You can see one in this pic. It would have ben fitted to many aircraft types but not necessarily all of them!

Hi All

As I can’t get the types of ‘Breeze’ connector (socket) that I need I’ve produced a 3D print! The connector series all use the same outer shell and pins in various sizes so I can get sockets with the right shell size but the wrong insert. I’ve also modelled the two spacer rings. So making careful measurement I’ve made a 3D file and had the insert that I need printed!

As well as the insert, the cable guides and the ‘backshell?’, are also rare. I assume that these were the first things taken off and easily discarded.

Anyway, attached is a photo showing the shell and the original insert parts (top), the new printed parts are shown below with the new cable guide and backshell.

Amazingly the thread on the backshell fitted! With just a little forcing, which I assume was just cleaning the threads, the back shell went on readily!

Now I need to draw up some more inserts and also I’ll be drawing the odd antenna connectors which I can’t find in any form – I’ll just make them!

I can get backshell printed in Aluminium but I suspect I will paint a plastic one!

Cheers

James

Hi

The rear turret on some Stirlings had a ‘flash bulb’ in the turret (like the ones on old cameras – a one shot pony). This was powered by it’s own battery and circuitry. Tail-end Charlie was far away from the rest of the crew and because the intercom might fail due to damage along the fuselage, the flash bulb was a quick instantaneous – abandon aircraft! It may not be relevant but it was the ‘flashes’ bit that caught my attention. Admittedly frame 6 is a long walk from the rear but possibly it was in the front turret?

James