Those Magnificent Men and their Flying Machines

[metal_meg]

Have a look at these for something a bit different in the world of (relatively) local Scottish aviation photography!

Cumbernauld Airport

Convair Airliner at Carluke, Lanarkshire.

Leuchars Airshow 2008

All these images also have Google Maps and Google Earth links.

meg

[tombro]

Brigit, I stand corrected re the 'Bucaneer' but it was still a magnificent aircraft for its time.

Tombro

[BrigitDoon]

Thanks for the links, Meg.

I haven't heard the name Convair in a long while. They were based in Fort Worth if I remember and made the 880 jet airliner, but were better known for their fighter aircraft, the F-102 Delta Dagger and F-106 Delta Dart. They also produced the exotic F2Y Sea Dart, the worlds only (as far as I know) supersonic sea-plane.

Interesting footage at YouTube >> with Satch soundtrack.

Later they changed their name to General Dynamics and produced the hugely successful F-16 Fighting Falcon which is still a front-line fighter-bomber in service with air forces around the globe. They were pioneers in the devlopment of "swing-wing" technology and produced the FB-111, which saw service in Vietnam as well as with the Royal Australian Air Force. (They were noisy blighters; British Aerospace used to have a contract with the USAF to service them and they'd often fly south over Somerset. Deafening.)


F-16A of the Koninklijke Luchtmacht (Dutch air force) at Greenham Common, 1983


Prototype YF-16 (colour pencil illustration by my brother)

...it was still a magnificent aircraft for its time.

Heartily agreed. We used to get them 'round our way skirting the hill tops and I can still see the brightly coloured example disappearing behind the trees. I think they used to come down our way before heading to practice ranges in Wales. There should be a navy example in the Fleet Air Arm museum at Yeovilton, in fact there used to be one parked right outside, but I can't remember if it's still there.

[cell]

Thanks Brigitdoon, I had a good look on this site and this one also appears as a BE2C also built at Weirs having a test flight at Carmunnock in 1916. Interestingly I printed these up a good few years ago from some old glass negitives that I came across when working there. I suppose they must have been copies of the ones that Scran have.

[BrigitDoon]

Wow, that's quite a find, those old negs. Luck you!

Well, I guess we've cleared up the mysteries, then, and I've learnt something I didn't know before. Scran's website mentions something about the BE2c having been built at Weir's in Cathcart, though I can't imagine finding the space there to get airborne. Plenty of land around Carmunnock, though.

[BrigitDoon]

1915 Avro 504K preserved by the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden, Bigglsewade, Bedfordshire. I took the photo in 1985, so it was 70 years old then. I believe it's still going.

http://tinyurl.com/dkebq4

I had some difficulty identifying it at first, but the registration H5199 is a bit of a giveaway. I have a number of photographs of older biplanes and can't tell whether they're full-size originals or radio-control scale replicas. My dad was a keen r/c pilot and constructor in the eighties and nineties.


Fieseler Storch, scale replica, sometime in the mid 80's

[govanboay]

Buccaneer, Museum of Flight East Fortune




Avro Vulcan, same place.

[JayKay]

A Royal Navy Westland Merlin over Govan. Probably a medical evacuation flight. Look closely and you can see a crewman at the side door.

[BrigitDoon]

Royal Navy Sea King

[BrigitDoon]

Hawker Hunter (Slide show >>)

[BrigitDoon]

Avro Vulcan, same place.

Sorry I didn't mention it before. It's a wonderful photo of a wonderful aeroplane. There's one recently restored to flying condition, though I've not seen it yet. I remember them at airshows in the eighties and the noise they used to make. Airfix used to make a 1:72 scale kit and no small beastie neither... You needed an extended runway for the big ones and an extended mantelpiece for the not-so-big ones.

(I bemember all they fiddlie little wheels...)

[BrigitDoon]

Hard on the heels of the Vulcan, I'll offer up that other classic RAF bomber: the Avro Lancaster:



Lancaster slideshow >>

and to finish off the evening:

The Red Arrows:



Red Arrows slideshow >>

[rabmania]

ain't that Lancaster lovely? My old mate used to sit in the front 'bubble', he was a front gunner/bomb aimer. Years after he died I met someone whose dad designed the front gunner's turret, among other things.

[Squigster]

Me in the cockpit of a Cessna about to fly over Dundee

[BrigitDoon]

Wheeeeeeee!

You did get your legs in, in time?