Posted: 18 May 2007, 08:07
Hi Auster,
welcome to the forum. Get the beers in mate.. :partyman:
ATB
welcome to the forum. Get the beers in mate.. :partyman:
ATB
Hello Auster
And a warm welcome to the forum.
Classic British Flight Sim
The home of Classic British Freeware for Microsoft Flight Simulator
https://cbfsim.co.uk/cbfs_bb/
Very new old boy
Page 2 of 19
Posted: 18 May 2007, 08:10
Posted: 18 May 2007, 08:23
Hi and welcome Auster, as said earlier you will find a great bunch here, anything you want or need to know, some-one will always be able to come up with an answer.
Regards Nigel.
Regards Nigel.
Posted: 18 May 2007, 09:29
Well hello Ralph, welcome to our little home of sanity in this ever spinning world 
I will let Ralph (Mr Auster) expand on his background when he sees fit, but from what he has told me about it, we can look forward to some very interesting British aviation (and non aviation) tales.
I will let Ralph (Mr Auster) expand on his background when he sees fit, but from what he has told me about it, we can look forward to some very interesting British aviation (and non aviation) tales.
Posted: 18 May 2007, 10:57
Great, Peter has told us many interesting stories and hopefully will continue to do so and if, as Trev says, Ralph also has many to tell........... then I am all ears!!
Posted: 18 May 2007, 11:05
Welcome to the merry throng Auster. 
One thing you'll soon realise about us, we are living proof that the statement "Even nostalgia ain't what it used to be" is very, very wrong!
AndyG
One thing you'll soon realise about us, we are living proof that the statement "Even nostalgia ain't what it used to be" is very, very wrong!
AndyG
Posted: 18 May 2007, 18:50
Welcome!!
Posted: 18 May 2007, 18:55
Sincere thanks for the warm welcomes that you chaps (not guys – we’re British) have shown me. What a friendly bunch!
Leif, I’m AOP MK 9 Auster, XR 240 (G-BDFH). Had to sell it a couple of years ago but it went to a good home, and the old girl is now in the company of about three of her sisters. Had it for about 23 years.
I thought I would start off at the beginning and give you some idea of what it was like for a working class schoolboy in the years just before WW2.
Born in Hull in 1929 and although the memories are fading, there are a few things that I remember vividly. Hull Fair was very big and although I went to it a couple times, the event I remember was seeing it from a short distance away at night and this bloke was on a high platform easily seen because of all the coloured lights. He then set fire to himself before diving off into the tank of water below, which was also blazing. No ‘Elf and Safety then.
My Dad was a prison officer and he was friendly with some of the dock police. The docks were opposite the prison on Hedon Road. One day he took me on to the docks and I walked past a lot of large and small ships at their moorings and cranes. We ended up at the trawler end and I got such a fright. There were these big women at benches, rough as hell. They were swearing and blinding (learned a couple of new words there) but the thing that got me was that they were using knives, their fingers were bandaged and their hands were all covered in blood. Dad explained that they were gutting fish and the bandages were to protect their fingers from being cut by the bones. No ‘Elf and Safety then. Hull, in those days, had a large fishing fleet, second only to Grimsby, I believe, and many of the vessels were poorly maintained. They were of that type that had a maroon coloured aft sail in addition to the engine. It was not unusual for trawlers to be lost at sea and I remember how often a missing vessel was reported in the local paper, the Hull Mail.
Still on boats. My grandparents lived in Lincoln and on some holidays, we used to travel there on my Dad’s BSA motorbike. To get to the south side of the Humber you could go all the way back to Goole and cross the bridge there, or go by ferry to New Holland, which was nothing more than a pier. Because the Humber is so shallow and is constantly getting silted up, dredgers were continuously working to remove this silt, at least from the centre channel. The shallow waters adjacent to the shores meant that the ferryboats, which were fairly small, had to be paddle steamers. I remember on one occasion when the boat was just a few yards from the pier when something happened (I know not what) and there was a mad rush of passengers to shore side of the boat. The damned boat tilted to a daft angle and everybody ran back to the other side. I don’t remember what the skipper said but I do know he was agitated. On one journey down to Lincoln, the bike got a puncture. Dad could not repair it but he had heard that you can stuff the cover with grass (Grass??) and it will get you home! He spent ages tearing up grass from the verge. My brother and I travelled in the cramped little luggage box at the back of the sidecar (neither of us walked properly for an hour after these journeys). I can assure you that stuffing grass in tyres is about as barmy as you can get!
That was the time of rearmament and we school kids were very interested in all the new aircraft designs that were being produced – Hurricane, Spitfire, Hampden, Wellington, Whitley, etc. We used to collect cigarette cards and I was especially keen on the aeroplane sets. How do you get hold of these cards if you are too young to smoke? You go to the local bus stop with your pals and ask those getting off if they had any cigarette cards, ‘please, Mister’? Almost without exception, they would dig out their fags and hand the card to us. Imagine that happening today. Believe it or not I still have a couple of sets that I collected – Aircraft of the Royal Air Force and Aeroplanes (Civil). Before the late 40’s, relatively little coloured printing was done. Did you know that some of the most accurately registered colour printing was done on these give-away cards? If you look closely at them you can see just how accurate they are.
1938 –9 was a very worrying time, even for us youngsters. WW1 had been over for 20 years, but there were lots of reminders about it. One was the large number of men that you saw with missing limbs (few prosthetics then) and we had all heard lurid tales from ex-soldiers about trench warfare. I think I grew a bit older at that time.
One of the kids who lived outside Hull to the east saw the German Graf Zeppelin (I think it was that one) when it was surveying the Chain Home radar towers along the east coast.
3rd September 1939. We were in Lincoln and mid-morning I was sent out to get a newspaper. What struck me was that there was not a single soul to be seen. They were all of course indoors, listening to the famous Chamberlain broadcast.
I will stop here (permanently if you are bored) – if not I will continue with the first year of the War in Hull when I got my first taste of enemy action.
Ralph
Leif, I’m AOP MK 9 Auster, XR 240 (G-BDFH). Had to sell it a couple of years ago but it went to a good home, and the old girl is now in the company of about three of her sisters. Had it for about 23 years.
I thought I would start off at the beginning and give you some idea of what it was like for a working class schoolboy in the years just before WW2.
Born in Hull in 1929 and although the memories are fading, there are a few things that I remember vividly. Hull Fair was very big and although I went to it a couple times, the event I remember was seeing it from a short distance away at night and this bloke was on a high platform easily seen because of all the coloured lights. He then set fire to himself before diving off into the tank of water below, which was also blazing. No ‘Elf and Safety then.
My Dad was a prison officer and he was friendly with some of the dock police. The docks were opposite the prison on Hedon Road. One day he took me on to the docks and I walked past a lot of large and small ships at their moorings and cranes. We ended up at the trawler end and I got such a fright. There were these big women at benches, rough as hell. They were swearing and blinding (learned a couple of new words there) but the thing that got me was that they were using knives, their fingers were bandaged and their hands were all covered in blood. Dad explained that they were gutting fish and the bandages were to protect their fingers from being cut by the bones. No ‘Elf and Safety then. Hull, in those days, had a large fishing fleet, second only to Grimsby, I believe, and many of the vessels were poorly maintained. They were of that type that had a maroon coloured aft sail in addition to the engine. It was not unusual for trawlers to be lost at sea and I remember how often a missing vessel was reported in the local paper, the Hull Mail.
Still on boats. My grandparents lived in Lincoln and on some holidays, we used to travel there on my Dad’s BSA motorbike. To get to the south side of the Humber you could go all the way back to Goole and cross the bridge there, or go by ferry to New Holland, which was nothing more than a pier. Because the Humber is so shallow and is constantly getting silted up, dredgers were continuously working to remove this silt, at least from the centre channel. The shallow waters adjacent to the shores meant that the ferryboats, which were fairly small, had to be paddle steamers. I remember on one occasion when the boat was just a few yards from the pier when something happened (I know not what) and there was a mad rush of passengers to shore side of the boat. The damned boat tilted to a daft angle and everybody ran back to the other side. I don’t remember what the skipper said but I do know he was agitated. On one journey down to Lincoln, the bike got a puncture. Dad could not repair it but he had heard that you can stuff the cover with grass (Grass??) and it will get you home! He spent ages tearing up grass from the verge. My brother and I travelled in the cramped little luggage box at the back of the sidecar (neither of us walked properly for an hour after these journeys). I can assure you that stuffing grass in tyres is about as barmy as you can get!
That was the time of rearmament and we school kids were very interested in all the new aircraft designs that were being produced – Hurricane, Spitfire, Hampden, Wellington, Whitley, etc. We used to collect cigarette cards and I was especially keen on the aeroplane sets. How do you get hold of these cards if you are too young to smoke? You go to the local bus stop with your pals and ask those getting off if they had any cigarette cards, ‘please, Mister’? Almost without exception, they would dig out their fags and hand the card to us. Imagine that happening today. Believe it or not I still have a couple of sets that I collected – Aircraft of the Royal Air Force and Aeroplanes (Civil). Before the late 40’s, relatively little coloured printing was done. Did you know that some of the most accurately registered colour printing was done on these give-away cards? If you look closely at them you can see just how accurate they are.
1938 –9 was a very worrying time, even for us youngsters. WW1 had been over for 20 years, but there were lots of reminders about it. One was the large number of men that you saw with missing limbs (few prosthetics then) and we had all heard lurid tales from ex-soldiers about trench warfare. I think I grew a bit older at that time.
One of the kids who lived outside Hull to the east saw the German Graf Zeppelin (I think it was that one) when it was surveying the Chain Home radar towers along the east coast.
3rd September 1939. We were in Lincoln and mid-morning I was sent out to get a newspaper. What struck me was that there was not a single soul to be seen. They were all of course indoors, listening to the famous Chamberlain broadcast.
I will stop here (permanently if you are bored) – if not I will continue with the first year of the War in Hull when I got my first taste of enemy action.
Ralph
Posted: 18 May 2007, 19:08
Not at all Ralph
Please continue
leif
Please continue
leif
Posted: 18 May 2007, 19:33
A belated welcome from me, Ralph. This is one of the best aviation forums on the web and from what you've written there, I'd say you've already contributed substantially to it. Please do continue with your recollections.