Those Magnificent Men and their Flying Machines

[Squigster]

Brigit, what really worried me was that i was in the cockpit & the pilot decided to get out

[BrigitDoon]

You still up there? You want I talk you down...

(Don't open the door just yet.)

[DMcNay]

Three pages of discussion and no mention of one of the greatest aircraft there's ever been?



Shame on you...

See, I even managed to make it relevant to Glasgow...

[BrigitDoon]

That's a wonderful shot. I hang my head; I must confess that I've been tardy in delivering the most beautiful and resonant machine ever to have graced our skies. Let us fill our minds with the wizardry that gave us this Merlin-engined wonder.

[BrigitDoon]

[BrigitDoon]

In Red Bull livery...

...de Havilland Sea Vixen (slideshow) >>

Later Hawker Siddeley as FAW Mk 2 and D3

I understood (of late last year) that the Red Bull vixen would be returned to its navy plumage of dark sea grey over white with appropriate squadron markings.

[JayKay]

Somehow the red bull livery makes it look very 21st century.

[BrigitDoon]

I was aghast when I first saw it, but then I was used to the standard Navy camouflage. I've got used to it, now that I've waded through the photos so many times. You have a point. It knocks years off of it. It almost looks as weird as a Formula One car.

[Robbo]

I've never seen an AWACS in flight, so bowels intact...

I remember it was either last year or the year before one of those AWACS Nimrods was I think doing touch and goes flying in and out of Glasgow airport, as someone said earlier very big and very loud aircraft.

[BrigitDoon]

None of the 11 MR2 airframes that were selected for conversion to AEW3 specification survive. The project was cancelled in 1986, one of the great procurement fiascos (see also TSR2), and the airframes were broken up during the nineties.

What you saw was most probably a Nimrod MR2. These are powered by Rolls Royce Spey engines which were also used in the UK-spec McDonnell-Douglas F-4K and F-4M Phantom II, which will explain the noise!

It might have been an MRA4 on a test flight. This is a wholesale upgrade designed to meet the RAF's maritime reconnaissance and attack requirements for the foreseeable future.

[Quality Mince]

Nimrod doesn’t have a Frisbee on top of it. That some sort of airborne early warning converted 707 or something.

Always enjoyed Prestwick air displays. Think the last one was 1985.

Always felt Prestwick with its very long runway, acres of empty land all around and planes taking off or landing to and from the sea should have been expanded as Glasgow’s main airport. All it needed was some investment in transport links. Abbotsinch is too cramped and the biggest jets fully-laden cannot use it. Travel to from Glasgow airport really not that much different to Prestwick!!

[BrigitDoon]

If it had a frisbee, then it wasn't a Nimrod at all. The converted 707 is known as the E-3 Sentry or Sentry AEW1 in RAF use.

There's a good overview of AEW aircraft here >>

Some have frisbees some have bulbous radomes.

[MungoDundas]

.

Not sure where to post, so shall just mention here that there were a couple of visiting
helicopters at Glasgow City Heliport overnighting 'til this morning (4th Feb 2009).
These AAC machines are called Agusta Hirundo and are, seemingly, serialed ;
ZE410 (grey/black underside)

and ZE412 (white with red & blue stripe decals)

[BrigitDoon]

Not sure where to post, so shall just mention here that there were a couple of visiting
helicopters at Glasgow City Heliport overnighting 'til this morning (4th Feb 2009).

Certainly posted in the right place.

The serial numbers (see http://www.ukserials.com/) were issued in the early eighties and one of the machines is listed as ex-Argentine Army, so they may have been captured during the Falklands War. There's a batch of five listed.

[BrigitDoon]

A little more research indicates that they are indeed captures Argentinian Army machines. ZE410 was part of a display of captured hardware at Yeovilton's Fleet Air Arm museum in 1982 and I remember seeing it with a Pucara that had a shattered canopy. It appears that they are now based at Hereford and are used to chauffeur the SAS around.