derekliston

If Britain had done that with every one of a kind single example aircraft they built, the country wouldn’t have enough museum space to house them! Tragedy, true, but RAF Cosford isn’t a bad attempt at saving unique machines.

It must have flown over Edinburgh at some stage since I remember my Mother taking me out to the street to see it fly over. I was born in 1947 so must have been very young if it was broken up in 1953!

ABG which was Coriolanus and the last one to be broken up, is now the registration on my Zenith CH701. People ask me why I don’t change over to a recreational reg. But as a lifelong aviation nutter why would I?

I think this is an absolutely horrendous thing to happen and I really feel for his family but for all the Jabiru knockers out there please note ALL aircraft engines can fail irrespective of make!

I actually realised that after I posted, but it is very reminiscent!

Looks like a demoiselle! Was it Santos Dumont?

Don’t countersink thin skins, use a dimpling tool. Several types available but the one I found most useful was from Aircraft Spruce, it utilises a male and a female die and has a 1/8” diameter nail through the middle and is operated with a set of pop rivet pliers. I also have a pair of dimpling anvils for a hand rivet squeezer but that is limiting for distance from edge. If in fact you need to countersink thicker material, buy a countersink tool specific to aircraft rivets because of the countersink angle. If dimpling you need to dimple both the skin and the rib flange behind it! I hope this h

I had the Airfix 1/72 model. Another example of brilliant British aero-engineering which came to nothing. I believe one problem for city centre work was that it was incredibly noisy with the rotors under power.

Didn’t really think so, but it was the closest thing I could find!

Keleher Lark?

Without wishing to cause too much thread drift I have a story about Beagle. As a young know it all apprentice I visited Rearsby in the very early days of Beagle. I was actually doing an aircraft design course at Loughborough University ( I like telling people that, but it was actually a short course for amateurs held at the University over an Easter weekend!) Anyway, part of it was a visit to Beagle and I with all my knowledge told them that the Pup, with all it’s stretch formed skins, dissimilar material welding and complex oleo style main undercarriage was too complex to be a success. Stran

Interesting, another dog! Shame though, it was a pretty aeroplane!

Do you ever wonder if Beagle failed because they were all dogs, literally, Terrier, Airedale, Pup and Bulldog? I don’t remember if the twins had names, only remember their numbers!

I used to help service one back around 1965 in Edinburgh. Quite a luxurious machine although typical early Beagle, probably heavy for what was the British equivalent of a C172. Had an interesting, supposedly thrust augmenter exhaust system.

Possibly wrong but looks a lot like a Beagle Airedale?