I remember ‘JJ’ when she was the gate guardian at Scampton, many years ago. Does anybody have any photos of her in that role? I also seem to remember she was mocked up with a Bouncing Bomb… or is time playing tricks with my memory?

Dean.

I can’t oblige with a Scampton-era pic, but here she is back in 1968 at Biggin Hill. Then she was entitled ‘Guy Gibson VC’, which may be circumstantial evidence that she was later mocked up as a Dams Raid machine.
From the archives, there was a thread a long way back about whatever happened to the Sabre (ex-RAF XB733/G-ATBF) which fizzled out rather inconclusively. Any more info now?

William

CNN are reporting eyewitnesses saying the plane was flying at about 10,000 feet and flames were coming from the tail section and suggesting an electrical fault. 🙁

All speculation at this point, but in the absence of a statement from the MoD it’s only human nature to wonder out loud.
Trouble is that until some sort of authoritative statement along the lines of ‘preliminary inquiries suggest that …’ is released, the conspiracy theorists will have a field day.

William

Can’t answer the question, but I took one look at the weather this morning and decided to give it a miss. I’m not at all surprised there wasn’t much aloft: it was well into the afternoon before things dried up even a bit. Those who saw the England game will have a good idea what the weather was like all day. Maybe Sunday?
Have look at this: http://www.southportairshow.com/disp_flying.htm OK if it’s more or less on your doorstep, but not the sort of thing you’d cross half the country to see.
It’s at times like this that maybe I can see some advantages in living on the other side of the proverbiable line from the Severn to the Wash.

William

Two thoughts:

1) I had an electronic circular only today from the people behind ZoneAlarm, offering Iolo Search and Recover 4 for £19.95. I use the full paid-for ZoneAlam, and I rather think it’s more for non-subscribers. But if it does what’s claimed for it, it could be money well-spent. http://www.iolo.com/sr/4/ I see there’s a free trial on offer, which might be useful.

2) A magazine cover disk for this month had Photorecovery on it, which I used successfully to retrieve some images from the apparently corrupted memory card in my son’s phone. Can’t find the disk now, but I think this is it: http://www.lc-tech.com/software/prwindetail.html

Fingers crossed!

William

TobyV, I did say if the Valiant-originated wings suffered the same fatigue problems, etc, and your point about the different flight profiles of an airliner and a low-altitude bomber is, of course perfectly valid.
I do have a lurking feeling, though, that sooner or later the V1000/VC-7 may have faced early retirement because of these problems. A hypothetical scenario is for the Valiant worries to surface as they did in 1964, followed by urgent inspections of VC-7 wings that would have dented confidence in the aircraft, possibly fatally.
A quick glace at the abovetopsecret.com site suggests that the VC-7 would have been a heavy beast compared with the 707 – wonder what its fuel economy wouyld have been like?
PMN1, the VC-10 testbed had the RB211 on the port side.

William

Two Sukhois and a MiG from the railway bridge at the north side of the airfield, exactly as Thunderbird 167 says.
The aircraft are tucked away behind a gatehouse, so I reckon if you asked the man on the gate very nicely you might well get closer. I didn’t have the time today, unfortunately.
Just as I left, a chap in a blue MPV almost the same as mine pulled up armed with binos and cameras. Didn’t have time to stop – a fellow forumite?

William

The Prowler video was great, but the soundtrack was a real blast from the past! Thanks for the memory.
I remember listening to Steppenwolf live al fresco in the early 70s when a Lancaster droned it way over the site. PA474 I’d guess, but wasn’t NX611 airworthy in those days?

William