derekliston

13 hours ago, facthunter said:

OR  any Plane. .  Nev

Spaceship though??? Didn’t there used to be a Sylvia & Gerry Anderson show called ‘Fireball XL5’?

Probably not the best name for a warplane!

The two connected names were Hengist and Horsa and whilst Airspeed built the Horsa, Slingsby built a military glider also and it was named the Hengist!

The Airspeed company was founded by the author Neville Shute who’s full name was Neville Shute Norway. The company grew to the extent that they bought him out which enabled him to become a full-time author and among his many books was ‘No Highway’ which I believe was the first prediction of metal fatigue destroying an aircraft!

Narromine 2016

Used to see those all the time as a kid in Edinburgh. They had a very unique sound.

10 hours ago, red750 said:

As the text states, the Bolkow is a licence built version of the Malmo.

Oops! Didn’t notice that.

Very similar in appearance at least to the Bolkow Junior!

Helped to remove and then refit the wings on one a long time ago. Not 100% sure, but I think I was still an apprentice at the Ferranti Flying Unit in Edinburgh back around 1964, but it also might have been at Personal Plane Services at Booker, High Wycombe around 1982 or so! Memory not what it used to be!

I think, to my memory, American actor Robert (Bob) Cummings used to have one!

Possibly the one that now resides in the Queensland Air Museum?

On 25/07/2021 at 10:27 PM, Old Koreelah said:

The Provost looks almost identical to Australia’s Winjeel, but I can find nothing written about this. Even more interesting, the Provost’s designer, Henry Milicent, migrated to Oz after working on the Provost, but his Wikipedia profile contains no mention of him being involved in the design of the Winjeel.

Biggest difference I have ever noticed between the two is that the mainwheels are on the inside of the legs on the Provost and the outside on the Winjeel!

I had a fly in one in England a long time ago, probably the British registered one in your photographs. It was restored by a friend/neighbour of mine, a Paul Longthorpe. It certainly was the strangest control setup I had ever seen , the rudder pedals were more like organ pedals than regular rudder pedals!

Like a miniature Airspeed Ambassador with twice the engines!

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 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.