Cameras

Whatever type of digital camera you buy, it will be out of date the following week.

A digital SLR is probably the best for aviation photos, as you will be able to use supplementary lenses such as long telephotos. Spending more money doesn’t necessarily mean a better camera.

I have a Fuji S5000, not an SLR, but it does take superb pictures. This is apparently down to the shape of the pixels, which are hexagonal on Fuji cameras. Other makes use round pixels, which have ’empty’ bits on the corners (think about it!).

The only trouble with my camera is that the controls are badly designed by people who don’t seem to have actually used a camera! Knobs on top are easily rotated by accident, so check for functionality.

Some manufacturers have poor quality screens that you can’t see on bright days. So check the camera outside the shop. If they won’t let you do that – walk away!

Menus can be very complicated and take too much time to set up – so you miss that plane flying past! Take your time in the shop to check through the menus – after all you are spending quite a lot of dosh!

Bri:)

Winch

Flight Refuelling of Wimbourne, Dorset, made the winches. Perhaps you could contact them?

Bri 🙂

Jet-assist

Does your Shak have the two jet engines buried in the main engine nacelles? That was the neatest installation of jet-assist I’ve ever seen on an aircraft. Were they under the inboard or outboard nacelles?

Bri 😎

Expensive items, those J le C clocks. In our RAAF Canberras, I had the job of replacing normal securing screws with ‘break-off’ head screws: this to prevent them being half-inched.

Apparently they were popular for time-of-trip measurements in long journeys by car…

Bloody awful job removing the screws later when the clock had to be removed by yours truly, an instrument basher!

Bri

10 Squadron, RAAF was based at Townsville, North Queensland, back in the 1950s/60s, with long-nosed Lincolns.

I served on 2(B) Squadron, RAAF, at the time with GAF Canberras.

Bri

Geodetics

Back in the 1960/70s, when I worked at BAC/BAe Weybridge, someone showed me a picture (or maybe the machine itself) that was used to ‘roll’ the frames for geodetic construction on the Wimpey.

It was much like an ordinary rolling machine, which twists the metal as it comes out. So it wasn’t as difficult to fabricate the fuselage as you might think. The people at Weybridge were very good at making specialised machinery to manufacture (or test) aircraft parts.

As far as I know, one of the really good things about geodetic construction was the damage limitation achieved in a wartime situation. Ribs and stringers so damaged could ‘fail’ the whole structure, whereas one or two geodetic joints being shot out would not. I understand many Wimpeys came back with lots of holes!

Bri