Altenrhein Museum (lots of photos)

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TobyV
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Altenrhein Museum (lots of photos)

Post by TobyV »

Another Swiss museum full of old British stuff. This actually used to be a factory, for most of its existence, the company "FFA" (Flug und Fahrzeugwerke Altenrhein / Aircraft and Vehicle Works, Altenrhein), located next to the old course of the river Rhein into the east end of the Bodensee (Lake Constance). The old river course delineates the border between Switzerland and Austria, which is literally metres from the airport.

Since the photo at a sufficient resolution to read the text would be too big, the "table" of all the aircraft produced or worked on here is linked below:
http://www.shockcone.co.uk/forums/ffa_constr_table.JPG

For the benefit of non-German speakers, the title reads "Overview of the aircraft types built in Altenrhein aircraft works". The columns are "Type, Purpose, Weight (tons), Power in HP, Work undertaken, split into Operations and Technical Office". Änderungen means modifications and Eigenentwicklung implies it was their own development. An interesting one is of course the Lear Jet, which is actuallz based on the aborted P-16 fighter project above it (it shares more or less the same wings).

An interesting thing about this 'museum', is that most of the exhibits are actually still airworthy and flying on a fairly regular basis (with the obvious exception of the Mirage, although there is one civvie Mirage based at Payerne)

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Things get moved around in this hangar a lot so the caption has nothing to do with the exhibit. The steward told me the rest of this aircraft is still stored and it could be rebuilt to static-display condition.

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Camera pod for Venom/Vampire reconnaissance aircraft

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..and the housing of the pod

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One of the four guns carried

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The impeller of the centrifugal compressor - more modern ones would have swept rather than radial vanes. Essentially, this exactly what you find in a car turbocharger, just much much bigger. Final compressor stage in the LF502/ALF507 in the BAe146/ARJ looks like this too ;)

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Close up of the camera in the nose of the Vampire, was curious to see what lens it had

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Hughes AGM-65 Maverick, one of the more sophisticated weapons carried by the Hawker Hunter

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Hawker Hunter, painted in Patrouille Swiss red adn white colours underneath. Seems to be partially dismantled at the moment. There was another one in the maintenance bay which was off limits to visitors.

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Close up of a venturi tube, presumably powering the instruments on the little single engined French prop it was attached to (sorry forgotten exactly what it was!)

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Funny to see this here!

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Somewhere, there was a Javelin missing an engine! The aforementioned P-16, cancelled after an accident in favour of a Hunter purchase, would have been powered by these.

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I believe these were originally developed in Trafford Park. We had one at work, providing high pressure air to a test rig, still badged "Metropolitan Vickers".

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Model of the P-16, the only visually complete full size example is in the Swiss Air Force museum in Dübendorf

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Mirage, mounted on large concrete blocks, presumably in case anyone fancies starting it ;) :lol:

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Lots of spare engines for Vampires and Venoms (all serviceable). The two with the smaller beige inlet covers are badged "DH Goblin" on the boss in between the covers, I can therefore only assume the ones with the larger yellow covers are Ghosts

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This little "Bravo" was built here and originally painted in these colours (look suspiciously like BAe house colours of the 1980s, I asked, but the steward didn't know why, only that it had been painted like that since day 1)

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No idea why there's an RAE SE5 here, I should have spent longer reading the caption!

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Hunter engine bay (spare fuselage)

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Interesting how the triangular intake 'evolves' into a hemispherical annulus in front of where the compressor would sit.

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A Link trainer! Just round the corner was a British poster showing the number of bombing raids on German cities during WWII. I was starting to question which country I was in!

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A wind tunnel model of something, not sure what though

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Another wind tunnel model - interesting wing planform!

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An r/c glow-engine model of the Dornier Do-X. Prior to WWII, this had been a Dornier factory and the Do-X flew from Lake Constance

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r/c model of a Dassault Mirage (IIIS I think? http://old.hermannkeist.ch/mirage-lll-s ... aeger.html)

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Exterior of the factory (now the Museum)
Last edited by TobyV on 24 Jun 2014, 22:13, edited 1 time in total.

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DaveG
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Re: Altenrhein Museum (lots of photos)

Post by DaveG »

Interesting collection there Toby. Thanks for taking the time to post those pics. :thumbsup:
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Re: Altenrhein Museum (lots of photos)

Post by TSR2 »

Thanks for those Toby, it always amazes how far travelled some of these get!

Could this be your first wooden wind tunnel model....

http://www.bahg.org.uk/images/NAD/supermarine_508.jpg
Ben.:tunes:

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Re: Altenrhein Museum (lots of photos)

Post by Garry Russell »

Thanks for that toby.

An old familiar luking in the background...G-LORD
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Re: Altenrhein Museum (lots of photos)

Post by TobyV »

It's certainly not far off, but the wing is different I think; the model has swept wings with a change in dihedral at mid span. Also not sure why they would have had a model of that there. Not even aware that they had a wind tunnel, although I suspect they must have had one somewhere for their own developments.

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Re: Altenrhein Museum (lots of photos)

Post by petermcleland »

Thanks for all those pictures Toby...And for the most interesting captions. I enjoyed looking at them very much :agree:

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Re: Altenrhein Museum (lots of photos)

Post by Garry Russell »

The models could just be a random donation, something they picked form some sort of sale or perhaps came with something that had been donated..another persons memorabilia perhaps??
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Re: Altenrhein Museum (lots of photos)

Post by Airspeed »

Thank you Toby,
Looks like a good day out.
"Wooden be" surprised if that wind tunnel model was a previous/later version of DaveG's Supermarine pic., it's so similar-nice work, Dave ;)
Couldn't find either in my encyclopedia of 2500 aircraft, but here's the text under a photo of the type in flight:

Here's some really heavy metal. In 1947 the Royal Navy evoked interest in a jet fighter which
had no undercarriage and was designed to land on a soft "carpet-like" deck. Presumably take
off would have been accomplished via catapult. This would allow not only a weight saving, but
also a very thin (laminar flow) wing. However, results with a Vampire on this theme were not
encouraging and hence the Supermarine Type 508, which was built to this specification, was
changed to have a conventional tricycle landing gear. The prototype, seen above with its Swift
chase plane, first took to the air on 31 August 1951. The second prototype was designated the
Type 529 and differed in having a variable incidence tail with dorsal fin strakes. Both these types
led to the development, and later adoption of, the Type 525 Scimitar which was used by the RN
in quantity the late 1950s.

Could be the "no undercarriage" version, with dihedral to give a flat landing pad. :dunno:

http://www.edcoatescollection.com/ac6/S ... 20508.html
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TobyV
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Re: Altenrhein Museum (lots of photos)

Post by TobyV »

Garry Russell wrote:Thanks for that toby.

An old familiar luking in the background...G-LORD
Yup, that used to belong to Carrill Aviation for a while, now seems to be owned by a Swiss woman:

http://www.caa.co.uk/application.aspx?c ... gmark=LORD

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Re: Altenrhein Museum (lots of photos)

Post by Filonian »

Very interesting. Thanks for posting Toby.


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