I still prefer the crane with a large piece of bungy attached engine noise and spinning prop a problem already overcome. I am am sure Baz with his skill on photo shop could give us and artists impresion ?. 10% off for you Robert!!:diablo:

Hang on just a minute.

A number of years ago I wrote an article in FlyPast on this EXACT principle, based on papers belonging to my late father, who worked for the civil engineers, Rendal Palmer and Tritton. It was on the subject of concentric launchers, by which the aeroplane ( Spitfire in the artist’s impression ) was whirled round a pylon until it attained flying speed.

It was proposed at a time when the country was awash with nutty ‘war-winning’ schemes- fortunately it was never built.

The article was published in the early 90’s, and the cover of the mag had the silver MATS Constellation (on ground ) against a lot of blue sky. I would find my copy but it is in deep storage.

I bet Paul Andrews the owner of MT818 would like this on his office desk !!

Steve.

Swap it for a flight – I would!

Reading some of the hugely enthusiastic posts in this thread, I began to wonder if I’d been watching the same programme! I thought it was about average, and I’m sorry to say it did nothing for me emotionally. I’m not talking here about the technicalities mentioned above such as continuity and wrong camouflage schemes etc, I knew already that it was done on a tight budget and so I was prepared for that kind of thing.

. In many ways the ‘Convoy Pair’ chapter in the book represents what Wellum was all about- an extremely brave, intelligent and talented pilot. The film suggests he lost his leader, attacked when he shouldn’t have done, and then he magically materialises back at base. Oh well!

It was very brave of the production team to take this project on, and they did pretty well with what they had, but it was never really going to be enough to do the book justice and I think that so long as you’ve read the book you won’t miss anything by not seeing this dramatisation-Sorry! I wanted to like it and enjoy it more, but it just felt a bit wrong and/or shallow in too many places.

STONE HIM ! Stone the unbeliever !!

I wonder if the Pope will be enforcing the No-Fly zone with his original 88mm AckAck gun, .. see if the old magic is still there :rolleyes:

Phillip Whiteman ( Editorial Team -Key Publishing ) is the brother of the Director and has makes the following obsevation on the Flyer forum

”The budget stretched to putting Sam Hueghan, who played Geoff Wellum, in the back seat of a Yak-52 for half an hour’s filming on one afternoon in May. The only Spitfires available for the money were the Mk XVI maintained at Booker by PPS and a fibreglass dummy MkI – that was it. There was nothing left over for air-to-air; all of that had to be done from selected unused B o B film stock, shot almost entirely in brilliant summer VMC.

The costume designer told me his total budget would just about have covered one pair of shoes for a feature film. Did anybody notice how the authentic dun-coloured summer 1940 Mae Wests were painted yellow in the later scenes, just as they were in real life?”

Sounds as though they have done a lot with pretty meagre funding, which makes it all the more creditable.

Just started..