I hope my son will take over my collection. I would rather see him sell things than give to a museum. I have given to museums in the past only for the items to disapear. I also have seen archivist’s get rid of things they dont like and when museum policies change due to new management. I have found its better to sell, at least the person who pays money for the item should look after it. I never use to think this way but have learnt a few things over the last 15 years.

Dave

My sentiments precisely. I have first hand experience of a museum mysteriously losing historic photographs, which I had visited previously to view and arrange for prints to be taken. I Went to pick the prints up – which turned out to be of an atrocious jpeg quality – they were embarassed by their quality of printing they could undertake, so I offered to photograph them with my camera whilst I was there and print them myself later at home – they went to get the originals out of the files, but the best and most interesting ones had mysteriously disappeared. To date they still have not been found and in my opinion never will!

My late father had the right idea (he could be ruthless) – split your possessions into two (1) Your personal and most treasured family related photographs, documents and items which you keep and (2) All other non-personal items such as books, trade literature, other documents and items, which you should sell whilst you are still able (he did, and that included a lot of rare aircraft, airframe instruments and manuals – I even remember him selling an early RFC wooden propeller). Now the secret is in the timing – if you sell before you pop your clogs, then you’ve got a bit of spare money to enjoy, but make certain that you don’t leave it too late or you’ll be too infirm even to enjoy that, and HMRC will be laughing all the way to the bank.

Now the bright ones amongst you will say ‘what if I drop down dead tomorrow’ – well don’t worry, someone will sort your mess out! Either your family if you have some, or the house clearance boys if you don’t, but please leave a note to your family to be discrete about the disposal if you have high value items, as HMRC will be lurking and waiting for his cut!;)

Now just an additional word for those of you who possess those lovely old photos – please – please have them annotated lightly on the back or in the album to identify who or what it is, and when and where it was taken. It is a distressing sight to see so many lovely old family photo albums which were treasured by their owners to be lost forever, hidden away in auction sale-room boxes with no marks at all to identify the family or photos. Some of you may disagree, but even certain Ebay sellers respect family and genealogical interest.

Have a great day!

i take it its a crash recovered engine as it looks like its had one hell of a hit

Sorry but I just had to smile at this one!

I was going through the 1944 Rolls-Royce Instructors’ Course Notes for their Merlin series engines, to see if I could find any useful info. for poor old retrowalter’s engine and I came across this sheet headed:

CHECKING DISTORTION OF CRANKCASE AND REDUCTION GEAR AFTER SHOCK LOADING

Item (9) Check neck of crankcase and engine bearers for cracks or damage.😀

That was Rocketeer throwing a spanner in the works! It has single piece blocks and a single-speed single-stage blower. The key with the photos is the design of the blower casing which was introduced in 1940 as the Merlin 45 ruling out any earlier versions.
The chart is interesting in showing how diverse the Merlin variants were.

Pete

Thanks Pete – the engine is far too modern for this chart!:D

Just some observations:

Appears to be a glaring discrepancy between the stamped date at top right which looks more like 9 SEP 1946, the date of the incident and the date the seller states the form is of 1939, or am I missing something here?

Perhaps you should ask the seller to explain this discrepancy!

The first thing that struck me is how well the typing looks ie. has survived, apart from the grammar which could prove difficult through trying to interpret what a polish (with a small ‘p’) pilot, perhaps with poor English was trying to tell you!

Sadly to conserve the rapidly diminishing ‘Attachment Memory’ in my account I’m unable to post pictures of all of NAM’s ‘engine test-bed’ airframes however I would note the following………………………………………………………Footnote to Mods how do I proceed when the attachment quota is reached?

I have the same problem – so interested in the reply from Mods!

I’m having to delete previously posted attachments to free up space for further posts and attachments. I do this on the premise that there appears to be rapid feedback on this forum, so the info. has already been disseminated to the most interested parties and feedback received within at least the first 48 hours.

Others on the forum have suggested loading images etc to Photobucket, but I find that method too slow and user unfriendly!