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Battle of Britain

We have an airshow where we live and there is usually a Lancaster fly over. The sound of four Merlins is wonderful...better than yer Tannoys and LS35as...its the real deal!
I still have Cold War period memories of Shackletons (4 x RR Griffons) droning out over the North Sea.
 
Interesting that pic Tony thanks. Out of interest a distant memory tells me these legs were tested at the point of completion at another factory. Does the name "Skydrol" or something similar ring any bells with you?

It was the hydraulic fluid used for the test and later found to be quite nasty stuff for your long term welfare?

I was told some years ago that Redifon Flight Simulation - later Thomson, were intending to move from their main factory site in Crawley but discovered that 40 years of leaking hydraulic fluid into the ground made the site an environmental disaster and the size of the clean-up bill was prohibitive so they stayed where they were.
 
I was told some years ago that Redifon Flight Simulation - later Thomson, were intending to move from their main factory site in Crawley but discovered that 40 years of leaking hydraulic fluid into the ground made the site an environmental disaster and the size of the clean-up bill was prohibitive so they stayed where they were.
That's quite common. An old dairy where I used to work is on the site of a Victorian tannery. They would redevelop it, it's prime land a mile from Leeds city centre, but it's contaminated with leather treatment chemicals so they are leaving it under concrete and using it for vehicle storage and light maintenance while renting some of the offices on the front. Shame, most of it is boarded up.
 
There were many Nimrod debacles - one I heard of involved two years and countless millions building new wings to the original De Havilland official drawings only to find that the fuselage mountings had been modified on the shop floor so they wouldn`t fit.....
 
I still have Cold War period memories of Shackletons (4 x RR Griffons) droning out over the North Sea.

My dad was a navigator on the Shackleton from the late 50s until the late 60s. He might have been in one of those you heard.
 
That's quite common. An old dairy where I used to work is on the site of a Victorian tannery. They would redevelop it, it's prime land a mile from Leeds city centre, but it's contaminated with leather treatment chemicals so they are leaving it under concrete and using it for vehicle storage and light maintenance while renting some of the offices on the front. Shame, most of it is boarded up.

The stench in Fez tannery was spectacular, loads of men stomping around in shorts in smelly toxic chemicals, quite a few chrome and sulphur compounds, can't remember what else but life expectancy was 40 if you were lucky.
You wouldn't want that under your veg patch.
I think it's the tannery in Koyaanisqatsi.
 
I still have Cold War period memories of Shackletons (4 x RR Griffons) droning out over the North Sea.

There is a Shackleton in the MOSI Air & Space hall (currently closed to have the leaking roof fixed). If you look closely at the fuselage just after the wing join you’ll notice a band of gaffa tape right around the thing where it was apparently quite literally sawn in half to get it in! Sadly that one will never fly again...
 

Some 15 or so years ago I heard a multi-engined plane fly over our garden, looked up and there was a B24 flying in to do a low pass on our local airfield. It was doing a tour of the UK, the only time I've ever seen one airborne. It seemed to fill up a lot of sky. The most ungainly looking thing on the ground, with its fat, low-slung belly. There were once many hundreds of them here in East-Anglia.
 
There is a Shackleton in the MOSI Air & Space hall (currently closed to have the leaking roof fixed). If you look closely at the fuselage just after the wing join you’ll notice a band of gaffa tape right around the thing where it was apparently quite literally sawn in half to get it in! Sadly that one will never fly again...

No, I bet our Tony Lockhart could get that sorted in no time....

My late Father-in-Law who worked on Vulcans amongst other RAF aircraft said that the great thing about the Shackleton was that when they thought of another piece of Avionics to fit into it you just drilled a couple of holes in the side and bolted it in - a similar exercise on a pressurise Nimrod was a major design exercise and two years to fit.
 
Interesting that pic Tony thanks. Out of interest a distant memory tells me these legs were tested at the point of completion at another factory. Does the name "Skydrol" or something similar ring any bells with you?

It was the hydraulic fluid used for the test and later found to be quite nasty stuff for your long term welfare?

It amazed me at the time how the bare castings would arrive to us and looked massive......I reckon we must have removed 70% of the meat to get to the finished item.

Skydrol is the hydraulic fluid used in airliners around the world and, I think, American fast jets. It’s a blue phosphate ester fluid, and by f*** does it burn when it comes in contact with mucus membrane. Be careful at the toilet...
Skydrol supposedly has fire resistant properties, but I think we are talking small differences over the red OM15 we used in the hydraulic systems on RAF fast jets.

I’m not sure why you’d use Skydrol as it would cause the OM15 type seals to swell, weaken and fail. Cross-contamination is a big no-no in workshops.
 
Skydrol is the hydraulic fluid used in airliners around the world and, I think, American fast jets. It’s a blue phosphate ester fluid, and by f*** does it burn when it comes in contact with mucus membrane. Be careful at the toilet...
Skydrol supposedly has fire resistant properties, but I think we are talking small differences over the red OM15 we used in the hydraulic systems on RAF fast jets.

I’m not sure why you’d use Skydrol as it would cause the OM15 type seals to swell, weaken and fail. Cross-contamination is a big no-no in workshops.

That was the stuff used at Lockheed in Speke Tony, back in the 80's at least. A lad who I served my time with became ill but thankfully recovered after working with it when he went on to work there. His specialist put it down to carrying cloths contaminated with it in his overall pockets.
 
That was the stuff used at Lockheed in Speke Tony, back in the 80's at least. A lad who I served my time with became ill but thankfully recovered after working with it when he went on to work there. His specialist put it down to carrying cloths contaminated with it in his overall pockets.

I know people who have worked with Skydrol every day for decades, and as far as I know they’ve the same mortality rate as the general population. Some unfortunate people could have an increased sensitivity to it, I suppose.
 


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