Mike Beachy Head has asked me (and probably others) if there are any unofficial climb-to-height records for the Lightning. There are no official records as these would have to be world records and the current turbojet records are held by a Sukhoi P.24.

Most of you will know that he is attempting to break the 20,000 ft and 30,000 ft records using a stripped-down T.5 but could do with knowing what the unofficial UK records are. I think that the late Brian Carroll may well have held unofficial records but I have drawn a blank on discovering times.

Anyone help?

Hi Dave, having qizzed Brian, Jimmy Dell and Peter Collins on a few occasions about this, (both Peter and Jimmy from AFDS days) they are all sure there was no offical climb to height record recorded for a Lightning.
Would love to be proved wrong on this and find out for certain.
They are all resonably unanimous that in a T5 Lightning from brakes off it would take 2.5 minute’s to reach 36,000ft, this was Brians ‘area’ as it were, he knew one hell of alot about the Lightning and its performance so I would be pretty certain this data were correct.
We all miss him either on the end of the phone answering questions like this or powering down Bruntingthorpes Runway in 904 or 728.

On another subject he did once tell us he managed 88,000ft out of Tengah in an F6

Hope this helps
Andy B (LPG)

Hope you dont mind me joining in
XR728 Binbrook ramp 1988

XR728 2002 May open day Bruntingthorpe

XS904 and XS919 (now at Wonderland adventure playground Notts, which I recently visited and got some piccies of).
Will post them if your interested

Binbrook 1987

XS904 on a wet open day in 1999 Bruntingthorpe

Sorry its only Lightnings 😀

Hi, we are up at the airfield tommorrow giving 728 a little stir, I know we have a box full of spare bits from Turner adaptors, I will make a point of digging all the bits out and see what I can come up with, will get back to you over the weekend or possibly Monday.

Cheers
Andy B (LPG)

Wonderfull news, and a lovely shot, thanks for posting

Glad shes gone to a good home 😀

Great shots thanks very much for posting, the hanger seems full now, we were last there at Cockpit fest 2004 when we had a stall in the hanger
🙂
Andy B (LPG)

Hi again, have a look at this site http://www.controltowers.co.uk/B/Binbrook.htm

And Im sorry to say Ive been though loads of shots I have from Binbrook and have only come up with these meager three, the first two were taken durning a base visit in 87 the the last one was taken on the 24th June 1988 when 728 was delivered to us at Bruntingthorpe, I thought I had alot more, will do abit more digging

Sorry their not internal shots as you asked for

Andy B (LPG)