Early one morning, before work, I took a walk in the fields near the house. As I walked through an area surrounded by long grass, I saw an orange shape moving nearby. At first, I thought it was a fox. I put the camera up to my own and focused on the subject. It wasn’t a fox. Instead, it was a ginger cat that was on patrol from one of the local houses. It was watching me as I watched it. I went on my way and it went on its way too.
I remember reading a piece about the cockpit of the Vulcan a long time ago that focused on just how cramped a space it was. The B-52 cockpit was a spacious place while the Vulcan was incredibly tight and had very limited glazing. Despite this, the jet was flown at low level and would be thrown around at air shows.
The two pilots up front are sitting on ejection seats while the three crew behind them are not so, if things go south (and they did sometimes), those three were out of luck. However, until I went to the Bournemouth Aviation Museum, I had never been in to the cockpit in person. They have the cockpit section of a Vulcan that looks out over the approach road to the museum. You can climb the ladder into the cockpit and stand right behind the two ejection seats. It is unbelievably cramped in there. Looking back at the three fixed seats, I was struck by how claustrophobic it could feel and wondered what manoeuvring in the jet would feel like back there. Might be a touch nauseating!
I’m not sure when this post will go live but, on the day I am writing it, the HMS Prince of Wales and its carrier strike group has sailed from Portsmouth for an eight-month deployment. A few weeks ago, we took a trip to the Isle of Wight and, as the ferry came through Portsmouth Harbour, I could see both carriers were tied up in the naval base. They were bow to bow alongside. Neither was showing much sign of going anywhere. However, as I now know, one of them was in the final stages of preparation for the deployment. I hope they have a successful mission.
Spring in the UK means bluebells will start showing up. I will come back to this topic in another post but, when we went to Farm Shop in Leckford , the road in came through some trees which had a carpet of bluebells beneath them. While Nancy was wandering around the shop, I did grab the camera and head along the road to get some bluebell shots. This was a nice start to the season but there will be more to come.
The late 80s and early 90s was a time when a lot of unusual planes were being developed and, much like the later time when VLJs were the trend and now with the EVTOL craze, most of them never made it past the test phase and in to service. One such plane was the Chichester Miles Leopard. I originally saw this plane at a Farnborough air show when it was displayed by their test pilot – a guy that also flew our Jetstream when I was on my Cranfield flight testing course as part of my degree.
Even at the time, I thought the thing looked ridiculous. It had this angular fuselage shape and was a tiny thing. The prototype was powered by a little turbojet by a company called Penny and Giles. I had never heard of them before, and I imagine the engine came from some sort of missile or other. Supposedly the plan was for it to be replaced by some (slightly) larger turbofan which would have improved performance, reduced fuel consumption and the noise! I don’t think that ever came about.
The Bournemouth Aviation Museum has an airframe on display. Looking at it closer up than I was able to at Farnborough showed just what a strange concept it was. I remember it looking spindly when I saw it previously but now it looks so fragile as to be hard to believe. The fuselage is stripped out, but it doesn’t look like it would have made for a comfortable ride. I will have to do some reading on how the testing went. All I can ponder when I see this is that someone thought it was worth spending a ton of their own money on. I wonder how those around them felt about it.
A walk in the New Forest one weekend was a very pleasant way to spend a day. This was not supposed to be an aviation related time but, as we walked across some open grassland, I noticed something large and four engined coming towards us at pretty low level. It was clearly an Airbus A340-600. European Cargo picked up a few of these jets and is using them from the nearby Bournemouth Airport for freight runs to China. I don’t believe they are a full cargo conversion but instead load the cargo through the normal passenger doors.
I only had the 24-105 on the camera so was a little limited in what I could get. However, when I went to the Bournemouth Aviation Museum a week later, I could see a couple of their jets on the ground at the airport. One was being loaded for another flight while an all-white jet with a registration that might be Maltese, seemed to be stored. Another time, I did try getting a shot of one departing, but conditions were far from ideal, and the location is not great for photography, so things were a bit compromised. Even so, it is cool to see some A340s still in use aside from the Lufthansa examples that have been my only other recent examples.
I was walking in the fields near our house once evening when I heard the sound of a helicopter above me. I searched the skies for it and picked up what appeared to be a dark AW139. I didn’t think it would be a military unit since the UK doesn’t have military 139s. I grabbed a bunch of shots from a distance. Lighting wasn’t ideal but, you don’t always get to chose the conditions you get. I think pulled up FR24 to see if it showed up and, sure enough, it did. It belongs to the King’s Flight and was heading to London from Culdrose in Cornwall. I guess the dark colours I was seeing were the maroon colours used by the royal helicopters. No idea if he was onboard or not.
Before mum took her hovercraft back to the Island, we had a stroll along the waterfront at Southsea. The construction work was blocking off a lot of the space, but the park area was open (if a little soggy). There is a museum to D-Day which I have yet to visit. I will have to check it out at some point. Outside the museum, there is a tank landing craft from the Second World War. It can be visited if you are in the museum but, even from the outside, you have a close view of it. Tanks in the war were a lot smaller than they are now but even then, carrying a bunch of them required a big boat. I have no idea what it could have been like to head to a foreign shore in this thing.
There are some open areas in Winnall’s Moor Nature Reserve that have reeds that grow quite high. It seems that the wind bows across the marshes in a consistent direction. The reeds seem to bend over with the wind but then grow back upwards resulting in a curve to their stems. They are all aligned while showing the same curvature and they look really interesting.
In the 70s, the potential for hovercraft was unknown and there were many types being developed. The BHC-7 was a military design that was tested by the British Interservice Hovercraft Trials Unit. It went through a variety of modifications as different roles were evaluated. I think some were exported but the UK never bought any more of them. However, the thing that I found amusing was that, because the Navy were involved in operating it, there was a wardroom.
It might not be the most glamorous of locations and I suspect other warships have nicer wardrooms. The sofas looked a little rough and the tea facilities were basic. However, it is fun to see that the important things were taken care of while the trials programme was underway.
