ChoxNever stopped to consider that you probably hadn’t been at St.Mawgan that long Baz!
I was a bit saddened when they started painting Nimrods hemp. I don’t think they ever looked as smart as they did back in the white/grey days. Whoever invented hemp paint should be horsewhipped! Ahh the happy days when the pan was full of shiny white Nimrods and the other pan was full of exotically-coloured Canberras!
ChoxWas the same shade of white used throughout the Nimrods career, or were there variations
Now, now, play nicely:D The burning question is whether the red trim on the Nimrod mentioned above was Signal Red (as it should have been) or Post office Red (which is what it looked like)… answers on a post card… 😉
PeeDee, the magnificent Nimrod stayed firmly in the nuclear biz through its career (well, most of it anyway). Those depth charges could pack quite a punch…
Chox
ChoxBrown yes, white no, I think sagindragin said it all! Be nice if it was true though, but then there’s not even any logical reason why anyone would want to paint a Nimrod all-white, unless someone had a yearning for the days of the SMR… but then we’d be wondering where the grey top surfaces were!
Baz, surely you remember Nimrods with 42 squadron circles on the tail? XZ285… Silver Jubilee? I know, your eyes probably glaze-over after a while!
A dark grey Nimrod with red codes outlined in white… it would look pretty smart… any offers out there you budding artists? :p
ChoxIndeed it is good to see that she still survives. I went to take a look a year or so back. I rather thought they’d painted the tail fin black and yellow since then? Has it been repainted back to the standard markings now?
Hope they carry-on lavishing attention on the old beast. I noticed it was even on the national news a week or so back – some “journalist” talking claptrap and behold, the Lightning was behind him!
ChoxWebPilot you’r just sounding childish. There’s nothing we can add. All of your points have been addressed repeatedly. As I’ve said, if you are so sure that Adrian and I are somehow wrong, then go away and produce just one photo to demonstrate this fact. Simple.
ChoxIt’s perfectly simple. The FAAM example is painted in the same standard fluorescent orange we’ve been talking about all along. You can argue forever but you’re wasting your time. I don’t think you even know what you’re arguing about now, you’ve been at it for so long! The thread was about Sea Prince colours when they were in service. They were orange. Adrian correctly states that a few (a very few) may (and only may) have been painted in a more red-orange, but this was probably simply poor photo reproduction, and applied only to a handful of aircraft which were photographed many decades ago. The point was (and still is I assume) that the Gatwick pair were painted orange, not red (and not fluorescent red either). Nor were they ever painted red. Both Adrian and I have tried to state this as clearly as we can.
So, by all means carry-on arguing but as even you have said, you can’t alter facts…
Anyway, we could solve things neatly by looking at things differently. If you’re so convinced that what Adrian and I have said is wrong, and Peter’s Princes really were painted red at some stage whilst in FAA service, how about presenting us with so much as one colour photograph to illustrate these mythical beasts? Just one would be fine…
If you can not (and you are welcome to take as many weeks or months as you like) can we then assume that what we have been saying is actually true? Surely, in the absence of even a shred of evidence, we must have actually been right? No, surely not, we’re just armchair experts. Mind you, if we are, I’m not sure what that makes everyone else…
ChoxAhh, so it hasn’t been repainted then, as I assumed. That’ll be fluorescent orange then, same as it always was. Blimey this is hard work.
ChoxNot unless they’ve repainted it old boy.
ChoxThe point regarding the general public has been missed.
Not at all – I addressed it in my reply. I agree with you that most visitors don’t give a toss what colours an aircraft wears. Naturally, they would much rather see clean and tidy aeroplanes than a pile of scrap. But this attitude completely fails to address the whole purpose of preservation.
Fine to say that the aircraft is protected but to overlook the paint scheme it actually wore is to effectively only partially preserve an exhibit. It’s only one step from leaving a rudder off or sticking tip tanks on an aircraft that didn’t carry them (*ahem*)… There are always good reasons for doing things like this but it completely devalues the purpose of a museum.
I don’t have any issue with the owner of any aircraft doing what the hell he likes with it. Likewise, I don’t have any issue with museums catering for the general public. But if they are to be museums (rather than amusement centres) we can’t go down this road of sacrificing authenticity in the interests of “prettiness.” That is just crazy.
It all sounds rather like the “Flambards Experience”… You start-off with a lovely collection of local aircraft, then the tourists’ entertainment demands are catered-for, and then the aircraft are slowly abandoned in order to entertain the public still further, until all you have left is a vapid theme park for screaming kids and dumb adults. Commercially-speaking, it makes perfect sense no doubt, but in terms of preserving aviation history it stinks.
Anyway, as I said before, if applying fluorescent paint is such an issue, then why nor repaint the Princes silver with yellow bands? They would be in the colours which they first wore, and be suitably tidy for Joe Public. Everybody is happy?
Adrian, the above news doesn’t surprise me. Maybe it’ll be Red Bull colours next? Here we go again…
ChoxI dunno how much the fragrant Ms. Burke will receive for her appearance but I suspect it will be rather less than the cost of the Vulcan! But regardless of figures, it does seem slightly absurd to devote cash to an attraction which has absolutely nothing to do with military aviation.
Thing is, thirty or forty quid is a lot of money for most people and in return they expect to be suitably entertained. The typical visitor (a couple with two kids presumably) is happy to see aerobatic teams, a couple of noisy jets, a Spitfire, and so on, and spend the rest of the time buying ice cream or sticking the kids in simulators, etc. All well and good I suppose, and it generates cash for the Benevolent Fund, but it leaves the enthusiast (particularly the older enthusiast who knows how things used to be) feeling distinctly shunned.
We’ve already reached a stage where the flying display has become dull as dishwater and is livened-up by only one or two star exhibits. I actually read a post on a forum where the guy is actually excited that the R.Jordanian Falcons are coming this year. I mean seriously, are things that desperate? That doesn’t smack of military air tattoo – it sounds like a garden fete.
Okay, RIAT can’t summon-up aircraft with a magic wand, and despite the increasingly difficult task of attracting anything worth seeing, they still manage to find a few gems (I guess an A-10 display is not something to be sniffed-at these days?). But it always seems rather like clutching at straws these days, and one gets the inevitable feeling that the event is on its last legs, desperate to find anything worth crowing about.
In some respects one feels sorry for RIAT as it’s a situation which they simply have to cope with. But on the other hand, is there not a case for simply accepting defeat and wrapping-up the event for good, in order to look at possible options for something else?
Surely, without the weight of the annual show hanging around their necks, RIAT could take a fresh look at how things really are, and what might be achieved with the assets that are still available. I don’t doubt for a minute that if the will was there, a great event could be created which showcased the RAF, FAA, Army, Nato forces and so on. But while RIAT continues to assume that a show should comprise of a set of individual flying display acts and as many static aircraft as they can find to fill the acres of concrete, nothing new can be devised. The show format of the past is just not sustainable now for military aircraft. Something new needs to be created from scratch.
But as I said before, I doubt if anything innovative can ever be devised while RIAT still drags the families through the gates. It is only when the ticket sales drop that RIAT will finally accept that most of us are bored silly with the event and although we might feel morally obliged to support their efforts, we’ve reached a stage where RIAT simply offers us nothing which is worth paying-for.
ChoxI’d be quite happy to hear Ms Burke if she was in my local night club, but at Fairford? Noo, that just seems inappropriate to me. If you need to wheel-in pop stars (with money that could have paid for an aircraft slot methinks) to make the event a success, there’s something fundamentally wrong with the event, surely?
ChoxIndeed, I would imagine that most of the forum readers couldn’t possibly care less about such trivia, but I’m certainly interested!
As I said, I don’t have any colour scheme references to hand (in fact I have no references on anything at present – it’s all stored away, but that’s another ugly story!) but if you’re in any doubt as to whether the red was indeed always specified as Post Office Red, then I could certainly ask around and see what documentation can be found to show where and when? As I said before, I have no reason to doubt the accepted wisdom on this matter, not have I any reason to doubt that you have located documentation which evidently specified Cherry Red. Thing that interests me is where this name might have come from and when – and why?! I’m mystified! I suspect Paul Lucas might be the person who is best qualified to offer some thoughts on this subject so I’ll ask him and post-up any information if I can find any.
Sorry to everyone else who must think we’re completely bonkers discussing such matters!
ChoxWell that’s a little bit unfair as I’m sure that any of the afore-mentioned historians would be more than happy to state what sources they have. I’m not suggesting that your information is wrong (as I said, you might have discovered something very interesting there) but at the same time I wouldn’t take that to mean that “accepted wisdom” has therefore somehow been wrong for all these years. I don’t have anything to hand which would interest you on this matter (inexplicably I don’t sit on a pile of paint spec. documents – doh!) but if you like I could ask Paul and Richard about this? Anyone know if Dick Ward has embraced the internet yet?!
ChoxWell it sounds vaguely trivial but in all seriousness, if you have uncovered some official specs that specify Cherry Red rather than Post Office Red, I hope you’ll make sure they are included in your book. You might have uncovered something significant there if it contradicts all that has been published previously, especially if there’s any clue as to where the term has come from – and when!
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