While out on a bike ride one weekend, I rode from Bighton to Ropley which takes me over the Watercress Line. I wasn’t aware what they might have going on that weekend, but it turned out that they had their “Thomas” making runs. It came out of Ropley towards the bridge I was on, so the phone came out to grab a couple of shots before I continued on my ride.
A few manufacturers have been experimenting with high-speed rotor craft. Sikorsky put its efforts into a project called X2. This is a contra-rotating helicopter with a pusher propellor. The contra-rotation of the rotors offsets the retreating blade stall issues that high speeds on helicopters cause. The rear pusher propellor allows the higher speeds to be achieved.
When the programme was completed, the airframe was donated to the National Air a Space Museum which put it on display at the Udvar-Hazy Annex at Dulles. Seeing it in person made it quite clear just how small the vehicle is. Since it is a research airframe, there is no need for payloads to be carried. It is about proving the concepts. That means it can be smaller and smaller also can mean cheaper. Seeing it from the side was also matched by having a good view down on it from one of the stairways. It would have been cool to see it fly, I imagine.
The Red Bull RB17 was one of the cars at the Festival of Speed that was attracting the most attention. I watched as it was put back on its display stand after it had been out on a run. It really is an amazing vehicle with complexity of aerodynamic design that makes the heart of an ex-aerodynamicist sing.
They needed to move it onto the stand sideways, so it was put on dollies to move it into place. I was able to get a few shots of it but there were technicians everywhere taking care of it so there was always someone in the shot. The stand had the RB17 on the base and a Red Bull F1 car mounted inverted on the roof. I went to the front to get a head on view of this combination.
I was at Brize Norton earlier this year. I had a brief chance to look at the ramp both as we taxied out and as we returned. A combination of A400Ms and Voyagers were about with some holding to depart as we came back and others awaiting their next mission. Here are a few shots of the residents.
It you want to get to Waterloo from Ebbsfleet in Kent, a bike is not the quickest way. However, it would not be a terribly difficult thing to do. However, you can make it a lot harder if you try. Split it into three days with the first being from Ebbsfleet to Dover, the second being from Dover to Brighton and the third being Brighton up to London Waterloo. You’d need a good reason and raising money for The Railway Children charity would seem to be good enough.
The beginning of September had me join a bunch of other fundraisers to make this trip. We had some dodgy weather forecasts with rain and wind on the cards, but it actually turned out okay with little rain and the wind being more of a help than a hindrance – although it did make its presence felt on a couple of occasions.
Four of us from my work rode together and we picked up another companion who seemed to find our pace suited him too. Here are some shots from the various points along the route. The fund raising is still open so, if you want to donate, the link is below. The first day was 92 miles, the second was 82 miles and the last a measly 61 miles. Plenty of climbing in there in case you want to know that it was tough.
https://railwaychildren.enthuse.com/pf/rob-edgcumbe-75d05
The glossy paint finishes on airliners tend to make the fuselages look uniform to the naked eye – particularly when at a distance. Of course, when you get closer – particularly on an aluminium fuselage – you can see the joints and reinforcements that go into the detailed design. A British Airways A380 was on one of the gates at Heathrow early one morning as we taxied by. I assume it had been there for a while because there was a lot of condensation on the skin from morning dew. This served to highlight the different parts of the structure including where the skin was thicker and were there was an overlap of skin layers. I thought it was interesting to see how it made a normally uniform fuselage look so much more complex.
Until I saw this, I had never heard of a hummingbird hawk moth. I saw this moth flying around the flowers and, having seen so many hummingbirds when living in the Pacific Northwest, I first thought that was what it was. However, we don’t have hummingbirds in the UK so it couldn’t be that. Did my usual thing and grabbed some images of it before it disappeared. What a big beast it is and very interesting. I do hope I get some more chances to catch them in the wild.
The F-35 is in widespread service in considerable numbers with many more to come in due course. However, before the F-35, there was the X-35 – the Lockheed Martin contender in the JSF competitive fly off. Up against the Boeing X-32, two X-35s were built. One of them was initially used to demonstrate the proposed Air Force configuration before it was modified with the vertical lift system proposed for what became the F-35B in USMC service.
With the competition complete, the demonstrators were superfluous and the X-35B airframe made its way to the National Air and Space Museum. Here it sits on display. What is the most interesting part – at least to me – is that they have taken the propulsion system out of the jet and put it on display separately. You can see the main engine as well as the lift fan module, the shaft coupling the two, the nizzle that both have to direct the flow and the roll posts that are used to provide both additional lift and roll control in the hover.
It is a cool demonstration of the basic configuration that is now operational in the F-35B. it has certainly been developed since this design, but the basic principles remain the same. Unlike the Harrier that had the engine in the centre of gravity of the aircraft (not a very convenient location) and redirected all thrust through four nozzles, this configuration has a mighty engine at the rear which can be vectored down when required through a three bearing nozzle that is both simple and ingenious but then a shaft drive from the same engine to a fan module that sits behind the cockpit drawing air from above and directing it down with some ability to vector it too. This forward fan balances against the rear main nozzle. It provides a significantly higher amount of vertical thrust than the Harrier ever managed and allows a larger and more capable aircraft to land vertically at the end of missions. Quite a smart piece of design.
Winchester is a busy city with plenty going on. It is also commutable to London, so it has an urban feel to it. However, Hampshire is a county that has a lot of countryside which is farmed. Consequently, there are a lot of agricultural vehicles on the roads of the area. It is not unusual for me to be heading north in the morning on the dual carriageway and come upon a tractor. At the end of summer, as harvest was well underway, we would get lots of tractors pulling loads through the town. As I walked down to the station, I had a pair of tractors pulling full trailers come past me and, a minute later, a second pair came. This time I grabbed a shot of them. Modern tractors are so much more powerful and fast. When I was a kid, a tractor would crawl along the roads. These things are real beasts!
During the Cosford air show, the Royal Navy Swordfish was part of the display. While it might not be the fastest aircraft from that era, it still has a pretty meaty engine up front. Once started, time is needed to get the oil up to temperature and to run up the engine to check its performance before it goes flying. The ground crew needed to keep the plane anchored while this was done and the way they did this was to hang on to the tailplane. Watching them getting battered by the prop wash while the engine was cycled was rather amusing.
