I found Peter Lewis’s picture of a ‘civie’ Argosy very interesting, never having seen a civilianised one. I assume that as there is no radome in the nose that those are front loading doors?
The RAF ones only had rear loading doors but that was a great advancement over side loaders like the Hastings.
DT
Longshot- yes that’s the Samoca camera I had.
I was given it by my dad shortly after arriving in Singapore as I guess he could see that he wasn’t going to get his old Agfa camera back now that we lived directly above the aircraft park.
A 15 year old boy who was very lucky…aviation was truly thrilling in the 60’s and I had access that you’d never get today.
I have an Epson 4870 scanner bought on eBay. I scan the 35mm negs at
2400dpi and leave them as ‘colour negtive film’-which they obviously aren’t!
I hope that keeping all the RGB detail until I print will help with any ‘post production’ I may need to do. Next I need a good printer, another Epson I think.
I do have to spend sometime with each picture in Photoshop, because even the scanning adds dust etc but some of the negs are scratched, unavoidable I imagine after over 45 years. Often there are also uneven ‘sky’s’ from poor development.
Photoshops even saved a few negs from impossibly bad processing marking, so I’m now convinced about ‘digital’!
The Asahi Pentax slr came out whilst I was in Singapore, the first interchangeable lens 35mm camera that I saw. I knew an airman with a Pentax but I could never aspire to having one..although I did years later and finally settled on the Olympus OM1 in the mid 70’s. I even had a 4×5 in the 80’s but children put paid to darkroom’s etc. and I gave up photography. Now I want a good digital one as I’m ‘fired up’ again.
The secret seems to be – look after you’re negs and wait 40 plus years until you bring them out again. Then everyone else has lost their pictures and are pleased to see yours!
David
Sadsack: only a cheap ‘Samoca’ 35mm camera with a fixed 45mm f2.8 lens. I took about 1200 aircraft pics in those 2 and half years but had to battle with processsing problems. The local camera shops had no clever film developing machines and controlling the water temperature during development was a nightmare. I was only getting very small prints initially and didn’t really notice how contrasty the pictures usually were. Eventually my dad bought me an enlarger and I started to sort out the problems. I would stay up late with my bedroom windows blacked out with blankets and washed the prints in the bath!
I still had some rather contrasty (or even soft) negatives because of the water temperature problems. Luckily a great many of the negs came out as good as these. Still upsetting to find some that are poor because of the ‘grain’ on the negs being messed up by incorrect development.
Just compare the first of my Lancaster sequence:
with these two of another great Avro- the Vulcan:
You can see that the Vulcan pics are crawling in ‘grain’ and are very soft as well!
The Vulcan by the way is XH539 that took part in Blue Steel tests at Woomera. Taken mid 1961 so I think she’s on her way out to Woomera. Just reading Tim McLelland wonderful Avro Vulcan book but still can’t work out whether she’s ‘going or coming back’!
Dave T
Argosy’s- no drawings I’m afraid but B and W pics galore if they are any help:
These are all 215 Sqn aircraft. The parked aircraft pictures were taken within a few days of the sqns arrival at Changi from Benson, in August 1963. The landing shots taken late 1963. They did lots of ‘circuits and bumps’ I remember in the first few months.
I took lots of the 215 Sqn Argosy’s as they impressed me by looking so smart and modern compared with the Hastings of 48Sqn! No sqn markings of any kind were worn whilst I was at Changi.
They arrived in time for 3 aircraft to carry out the evacuation of embassy staff from Djakarta in September 63 and the participated in the ‘confrontation’ with Indonesia with an Argosy detached to Labuan. The short t/o and landing capability was much used.
I am surprised that the Argosy’s RAF life was so short. The 215 Sqn aircraft were mainly returned to Akrotiri or spread about the other 4 Argosy sqns and the 215 was disbanded in late 1967. By now 48 Sqn had C-130s, the aircraft that obviously was superior to the Argosy. Perhaps that should have been recognised earlier and the Hercs first purchased when the Aussie’s and others started getting them.
David Taylor.
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