junior wrote:I would have thought the pilots helmet was just for general driving around town in the Nova ?
Actually... you're right. I thought it matched the retro-futuristic style of the Nova quite well. Only trouble is there is even less headroom than normal with the canopy closed, although I have been toying with the idea of making an open top spyder version out of the spare canopy frame
taffioch wrote:The Jaguar didn't replace the Lightning. It was a ground attack/interdiction aircraft optimised for low level. It was intended to replace the F4 in this role, which it did to a great extent. The F4 then replaced the Lightning, though never entirely; the Tornado F1/F3 came along before the last two squadrons of Lightnings finally retired. My mate and I flew the last two RAF Lightnings out of Binbrook as a pair in June '88.
That makes perfect sense when I think about it. I can't imagine why I would have thought the Jag replaced the Lightning. Perhaps it was the lack of RAF bases around the home counties where I grew up. A Vulcan flew over the school once and everyone said "oh look, it's Concorde", which sort of sums it up
The all steel Miles M52 wind tunnel model is there. It's quite big. Three or four feet long. The wing leading and trailing edges have plastic protection strips on them to save the visitors fingers - they are razor sharp.
Eric Brown flew the Gillette Falcon made by Miles to fly with wings with Sharp leading and trailing edges. Of course the clue is in the name.
That is so cool - I recall there was an even more radical design from the same era, swept wing and T-tail like an early MiG 15, but the pilot was prone under a small glazed area inside the engine intake. I suppose compared to the M52 it wasn't that dissimilar, as the M52 cockpit was effectively in the shock cone of the air intake...
When I get back on the road I am going to do a serious tour of air museums, starting with Cosford...
Well John talking about being the last pair of lightning's to takeoff .it Has caused a bit of a reaction on Twitter. When i mentioned it to a few guys i follow. It's jogged afew memories.
They also want more stories
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It's true about the pairs approach to the apron. I was just hanging on assuming Paul would power up and take it round from a foot or so. But he didn't, and we both kissed the concrete for a moment. After that we climbed away, split up, and 'wired it' individually. We visited Coningsby and Wittering on the way south, but the weather was rubbish. At Cranfield, there was a light aircraft fly-in going on,so we couldn't get too heroic in case we blew one over. And that was it...
just like that! like a story we'd have about having a drive out!
very nonchalant, just like the man always is, like he's just sitting down my unit recapturing these stories while telling me he's getting in the way
fascinating stuff
That is brilliant - is that the same guy that flew the Spit down the Goodwood start/finish straight at zero feet? I was walking in from the car park when he flew through (it was around 8:00 am, he must have known he was going to get into trouble for doing it), and all I saw was the Spit dive down below the grandstands and then miraculously appear again climbing out the other end. The stills captured from the crowd line that day are legendary...
Gutted I'll never get to fly in her . Manston was Concordes emergency runway. Plus they used to do flights round the Bay of Biscay From there .Was about £500 if i remember right. Seems a bargain now
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Me too. I was saving BA airmiles like crazy at the end of the 90s, but still didn't have enough by the time the aircraft was withdrawn from service. Years ago a work colleague who was also a qualified pilot blagged his way onto the flight deck at 58,000 feet, he said it was the closest thing you could get to space travel. That's why I wanted to fly on Concorde - you can keep the champagne and caviar. I just want to fly in space
Concorde was an amazing feat of sustained supersonic flight. Grounding it was just a way of cutting maintenance costs by Airbus, who preferred to see airlines buying new A380s instead of flying passengers at twice the speed of sound. Oh well - that's progress for you
Totally agree Lauren,what the French did was shocking and BA too .How to go backwards.
Yet there's a lucky chap on the thread who could have flown higher
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Drinking champagne and eating caviar is one thing but doing it at Mach 2 and 60,000ft is quite another. Truly incredible. We should ask a military pilot what he/she is wearing and what he/she has on their face at 60,000ft.
There are so many amazing features that Concorde has but the main one for me is that it can maintain Mach 2 without afterburner. What the military call "Supercruise'". I read that Concorde has spent more time in Supercruise than all the other aircraft capable of Supercruise combined.
If you want to just get to space Lauren, I reckon the most cost-effective way is a weather balloon
