Re: Very new old boy
Posted: 07 Sep 2007, 19:09
Last Post
There have been a couple of magazine articles on XR240. One was in Pilot magazine, referred to in an earlier post in which Alan Bramson gave his views on it at Popham. The second was in the Air Pictorial, December 1991 when it was featured with the Military Auster Flight (MAF) at Duxford.
The MAF tried to have as many military variants as possible and they would take part in airshows throughout the season, demonstrating the low level manoeuvres that were employed by the Army for artillery spotting. It was not directly connected with the Army but most of its pilots were ex- or serving army officers. Often it was short of a MK9 so we arranged for them to borrow mine.
One day there was a display at Middle Wallop and because of insurance problems, I was passenger in XR240 whilst an ex-army man piloted it through the routine. It was a short flight to remember as we flew at 100 feet parallel with the crowd line and the 25 pounders opened up with very loud bangs to produce clouds of smoke that we had to fly through.
The Flight used to train and go through the routines at Bassingbourn, previous home to the famous Memphis Belle, and one of these meeting was on 3 May 1992. I had been assured that there would be Avgas available because several flights would be made during the practice sessions and we would then need fuel to get home. The display routines were completed and it was time to leave. There was fuel available but not enough. So the upper Army ranks filled up and yours truly got none. I had about seven gallons on board. Left hand tank nearly empty, right hand tank with about six gallons – enough for 3/4 hour’s flying time. The ex-major in charge of fuel said ‘Not to worry. There is plenty of Avgas available at Bourn’, which was a mere seven miles to the north. I took off with one of the MAF pilots, an experienced MK9 man, who said he was not happy flying from the right hand seat, so I was in command. We landed at Bourn and asked about refuelling. The people we spoke to, for some reason or other appeared to be quite bolshie. They said that they had fuel but they would not sell us any. Why? I don’t know.
I then decided to refuel at Cambridge, about 13 miles away if you chose to go round the north of the city to the airport which is located on the east side of it. We were at 1500 feet agl, the minimum height in the circumstances and just outside the built up area of the city. We could clearly see the airport over to our right and I called them and received landing instructions. The right hand seat man suggested that I cut across the city to shorten the route to the airport. I refused, quite apart from the fact that it stipulated on the Permit to Fly that the aircraft must not be flown over any built up area. Thank goodness I did because, without warning the engine stopped for real. This was another ILAFFT. If you fly close to a built up area at 1500 feet, although conforming with the regulations, you restrict your choice of suitable landing sites by 50%.
What alarmed me most was the rate of descent. All previous engine failure practices had been done with the engine throttled back but it was still providing some power if only to prevent drag from the propellor. However, with a duff engine, the propellor now acted as a large airbrake as it windmilled and so the drag increased enormously. This fact limited our choice of landing spots because we were coming down a bit like a shot duck. There was nowhere suitable in Cambridge and on my side all I could see were two narrow fields, end to end, with a low hedge separating them. There were a few cows in the far field. The fields were too close but there was nothing else suitable. Beyond them was an embankment that carried the A14 and a line of pylons. I rapidly dropped full flap and banked to line up but we were too fast so I held it down about three feet above the grass with the intention of, hauling it up over the hedge, if necessary, and landing in the next field. The hedge was less than five feet high.
It was at this point that the bloke in the right hand seat, took hold of the stick, and pushed it forward. Why? It’s just possible that he was influenced by the only other MK9 crash that he had experienced when he was in Malaya. He had been in the same seat and therefore not flying the aeroplane and it had ended up on its back and he wasn’t going to risk us clipping the hedge and flipping over again. I don’t know. We never discussed it. The main wheels contacted the ground and we were doing a wheeled arrival with the hedge coming straight at us. There was an enormous crack when we went through the hedge as the port undercarriage leg broke off and we ended up slewed round. I had to get out of the cockpit via the starboard door. There were no injuries thanks to our harnesses and we started to survey the damage. The hedge really was very low and the wings had passed cleanly over it with only the port flap being damaged. I am sure that I would have cleared it, but there we are. And then he started.
The farmer who owned the field came storming out of his house which was on the edge of it with bulging eyes, face like a beetroot and severely out of breath. ‘What the bloody hell are you playing at, landing in my field? I didn’t give you permission! Can’t you see that my cows are in calf and you have just given them a bloody fright!’ He didn’t seem to have noticed that all the cows were slowly munching away and showing not the slightest interest in the proceedings. His small wife had followed him out into the field and was saying, ’Please calm down, dear, you’ll be having another heart attack!’ We were among the debris of a damaged aeroplane and he was leading off. It was difficult to keep a straight face.
Eventually he did calm down and allowed us to use his telephone to tell our families that we would be a little late getting home. I also rang Cambridge airfield to cancel the landing, telling them that we didn’t need their services because we had found somewhere else to land.
Marshalls of Cambridge collected it the following day and it remained in their hangar for about the next 18 months. It was the wrong organisation for that sort of work. Weeks and weeks would go by with nothing being done. They had a contract to maintain the UAS Chipmunks and poor old XR240 was on the back burner. In another department they had Hercules maintenance contracts with several air forces and had built a very large hangar for them. It was a good opportunity to have the wings recovered and the engine stripped down and all parts crack detected.
Now, why had the engine stopped? There was usable fuel on board, mostly in the starboard tank, but it was highly likely that it was a fuel starvation problem. The AAIB were involved and you will recall that I mentioned that fuel flowed from the tanks under gravity and then there was a non-return valve in each line before both fuel pipes came together in a tee joint. The AAIB man wanted to be there when the NRVs were opened. What they found were two bits of bath caulk stuck in the starboard NRV. Long ago in the past, an engineer had repaired the tanks by using this caulk to seal the corners. The AAIB man knew that it was not a suitable material because of the effect of petrol on it. The CAA used to regularly produce GASIL (General Aviation Safety Information Leaflet) a pamphlet showing the latest faults, mishaps, etc., involved in flying and maintenance and it was issued to all aircraft owners. In one copy, dear old XR240 featured on the front page in colour, showing where not to use bath caulk.
So that was that. Or was it?
I wasn’t happy about the caulk explanation, mainly because it had not blocked the entire hole. There was room for fuel to get past the caulk. But the engine had stopped dead. When you run a tank dry you get intermittent firing and that’s always a good sign for you to have a look at your selector. So I thought that we might have had something similar in this case, i.e. intermittent firing or a drop in power. Marshalls decided to replace both NRVs and they showed me the old ones when I next visited them.
The valve is a simple disc sitting on an annular seat with a light cage to centralise the disc. The disc was actually sitting on its seat and not rattling around so I pressed against the disc and it did not want to come off the seat. No reason was ever found to explain why the disc was so attached. It was checked for cleanliness, magnetism and wringing, i.e., when two parts which have near perfectly flat surfaces adhere due to air pressure. I sent the valve to the AAIB and the man there said that if he dropped the valve on to his desk the disc would only came off the seat when the height was about 8 or 10 inches. Neither he nor I had ever seen anything like it.
What was the valve for? Nobody seemed to know. The flow direction of the valve was downwards so the non-return bit was to stop fuel flowing back into the tank. The most likely purpose of the valve was to stop cross feeding of fuel in the event of say battle damage in one of the tanks.
I insisted on the discs being removed from both valves because they served no useful purpose and there was always the possibility that they were the cause of the engine failure. It would seem that the mysterious disc problem probably occurred when the fuel level was low.
The only other aircraft that uses these valves in the same way is, as far as I know, the Bulldog, but that of course is a low wing craft. There was a fatal crash of an RAF Bulldog, involving an instructor and a student, when it had engine failure just after take off with low fuel. No explanation for the crash was found but it was thought to be fuel related.
My crash was not too dramatic because, once I had seen the fields, I felt that I was in control during the whole procedure, apart from the chap next door who alarmed me a bit. I really did have George to thank for that and there is no doubt in my own mind that continuous training for all eventualities is essential if you are going to go flying..
Unfortunately, at that time, our company was starting to experience trading difficulties because of the advances in computer graphics and I was unable to fly as frequently as I would have liked. Finally, after retirement, I could no longer afford to keep the old dear and sadly, she had to go but as you know, she went to a very good home.
Postscript
Aviation has always been a factor in my life and I realise how lucky I am to have experienced a range of its different facets. To be able to design, maintain and fly aeroplanes is, I suppose, more than ones fair share of the cake in this unfair world. And now I am able to start all over again with simulator flying, which fascinates me but which I find considerably harder to master than the real thing. I am also grateful that at my age, I am able to recall some of the memorable events and happenings of the past (Please don’t ask me what I had for breakfast this morning).
Going to fly-ins and displays, sprawling out on the grass under the shade of the wing on hot summer days, meeting lots of interesting aviation people, cloud hopping among the cumulus, returning in the smooth evening air as the sun goes down, dropping in to someone’s strip for afternoon tea by the river and giving them flights in return. Halcyon days, indeed.
A number of the people that I have mentioned are no longer with us and it saddens me to think that so much talent is no longer there to be called upon.
I will conclude with a few photographs, mostly of the old lady, in a separate post. Generally, they are of poor quality so please accept my apologies. My excuse is that I didn’t take them.
That’s all, Folks!
Ralph
There have been a couple of magazine articles on XR240. One was in Pilot magazine, referred to in an earlier post in which Alan Bramson gave his views on it at Popham. The second was in the Air Pictorial, December 1991 when it was featured with the Military Auster Flight (MAF) at Duxford.
The MAF tried to have as many military variants as possible and they would take part in airshows throughout the season, demonstrating the low level manoeuvres that were employed by the Army for artillery spotting. It was not directly connected with the Army but most of its pilots were ex- or serving army officers. Often it was short of a MK9 so we arranged for them to borrow mine.
One day there was a display at Middle Wallop and because of insurance problems, I was passenger in XR240 whilst an ex-army man piloted it through the routine. It was a short flight to remember as we flew at 100 feet parallel with the crowd line and the 25 pounders opened up with very loud bangs to produce clouds of smoke that we had to fly through.
The Flight used to train and go through the routines at Bassingbourn, previous home to the famous Memphis Belle, and one of these meeting was on 3 May 1992. I had been assured that there would be Avgas available because several flights would be made during the practice sessions and we would then need fuel to get home. The display routines were completed and it was time to leave. There was fuel available but not enough. So the upper Army ranks filled up and yours truly got none. I had about seven gallons on board. Left hand tank nearly empty, right hand tank with about six gallons – enough for 3/4 hour’s flying time. The ex-major in charge of fuel said ‘Not to worry. There is plenty of Avgas available at Bourn’, which was a mere seven miles to the north. I took off with one of the MAF pilots, an experienced MK9 man, who said he was not happy flying from the right hand seat, so I was in command. We landed at Bourn and asked about refuelling. The people we spoke to, for some reason or other appeared to be quite bolshie. They said that they had fuel but they would not sell us any. Why? I don’t know.
I then decided to refuel at Cambridge, about 13 miles away if you chose to go round the north of the city to the airport which is located on the east side of it. We were at 1500 feet agl, the minimum height in the circumstances and just outside the built up area of the city. We could clearly see the airport over to our right and I called them and received landing instructions. The right hand seat man suggested that I cut across the city to shorten the route to the airport. I refused, quite apart from the fact that it stipulated on the Permit to Fly that the aircraft must not be flown over any built up area. Thank goodness I did because, without warning the engine stopped for real. This was another ILAFFT. If you fly close to a built up area at 1500 feet, although conforming with the regulations, you restrict your choice of suitable landing sites by 50%.
What alarmed me most was the rate of descent. All previous engine failure practices had been done with the engine throttled back but it was still providing some power if only to prevent drag from the propellor. However, with a duff engine, the propellor now acted as a large airbrake as it windmilled and so the drag increased enormously. This fact limited our choice of landing spots because we were coming down a bit like a shot duck. There was nowhere suitable in Cambridge and on my side all I could see were two narrow fields, end to end, with a low hedge separating them. There were a few cows in the far field. The fields were too close but there was nothing else suitable. Beyond them was an embankment that carried the A14 and a line of pylons. I rapidly dropped full flap and banked to line up but we were too fast so I held it down about three feet above the grass with the intention of, hauling it up over the hedge, if necessary, and landing in the next field. The hedge was less than five feet high.
It was at this point that the bloke in the right hand seat, took hold of the stick, and pushed it forward. Why? It’s just possible that he was influenced by the only other MK9 crash that he had experienced when he was in Malaya. He had been in the same seat and therefore not flying the aeroplane and it had ended up on its back and he wasn’t going to risk us clipping the hedge and flipping over again. I don’t know. We never discussed it. The main wheels contacted the ground and we were doing a wheeled arrival with the hedge coming straight at us. There was an enormous crack when we went through the hedge as the port undercarriage leg broke off and we ended up slewed round. I had to get out of the cockpit via the starboard door. There were no injuries thanks to our harnesses and we started to survey the damage. The hedge really was very low and the wings had passed cleanly over it with only the port flap being damaged. I am sure that I would have cleared it, but there we are. And then he started.
The farmer who owned the field came storming out of his house which was on the edge of it with bulging eyes, face like a beetroot and severely out of breath. ‘What the bloody hell are you playing at, landing in my field? I didn’t give you permission! Can’t you see that my cows are in calf and you have just given them a bloody fright!’ He didn’t seem to have noticed that all the cows were slowly munching away and showing not the slightest interest in the proceedings. His small wife had followed him out into the field and was saying, ’Please calm down, dear, you’ll be having another heart attack!’ We were among the debris of a damaged aeroplane and he was leading off. It was difficult to keep a straight face.
Eventually he did calm down and allowed us to use his telephone to tell our families that we would be a little late getting home. I also rang Cambridge airfield to cancel the landing, telling them that we didn’t need their services because we had found somewhere else to land.
Marshalls of Cambridge collected it the following day and it remained in their hangar for about the next 18 months. It was the wrong organisation for that sort of work. Weeks and weeks would go by with nothing being done. They had a contract to maintain the UAS Chipmunks and poor old XR240 was on the back burner. In another department they had Hercules maintenance contracts with several air forces and had built a very large hangar for them. It was a good opportunity to have the wings recovered and the engine stripped down and all parts crack detected.
Now, why had the engine stopped? There was usable fuel on board, mostly in the starboard tank, but it was highly likely that it was a fuel starvation problem. The AAIB were involved and you will recall that I mentioned that fuel flowed from the tanks under gravity and then there was a non-return valve in each line before both fuel pipes came together in a tee joint. The AAIB man wanted to be there when the NRVs were opened. What they found were two bits of bath caulk stuck in the starboard NRV. Long ago in the past, an engineer had repaired the tanks by using this caulk to seal the corners. The AAIB man knew that it was not a suitable material because of the effect of petrol on it. The CAA used to regularly produce GASIL (General Aviation Safety Information Leaflet) a pamphlet showing the latest faults, mishaps, etc., involved in flying and maintenance and it was issued to all aircraft owners. In one copy, dear old XR240 featured on the front page in colour, showing where not to use bath caulk.
So that was that. Or was it?
I wasn’t happy about the caulk explanation, mainly because it had not blocked the entire hole. There was room for fuel to get past the caulk. But the engine had stopped dead. When you run a tank dry you get intermittent firing and that’s always a good sign for you to have a look at your selector. So I thought that we might have had something similar in this case, i.e. intermittent firing or a drop in power. Marshalls decided to replace both NRVs and they showed me the old ones when I next visited them.
The valve is a simple disc sitting on an annular seat with a light cage to centralise the disc. The disc was actually sitting on its seat and not rattling around so I pressed against the disc and it did not want to come off the seat. No reason was ever found to explain why the disc was so attached. It was checked for cleanliness, magnetism and wringing, i.e., when two parts which have near perfectly flat surfaces adhere due to air pressure. I sent the valve to the AAIB and the man there said that if he dropped the valve on to his desk the disc would only came off the seat when the height was about 8 or 10 inches. Neither he nor I had ever seen anything like it.
What was the valve for? Nobody seemed to know. The flow direction of the valve was downwards so the non-return bit was to stop fuel flowing back into the tank. The most likely purpose of the valve was to stop cross feeding of fuel in the event of say battle damage in one of the tanks.
I insisted on the discs being removed from both valves because they served no useful purpose and there was always the possibility that they were the cause of the engine failure. It would seem that the mysterious disc problem probably occurred when the fuel level was low.
The only other aircraft that uses these valves in the same way is, as far as I know, the Bulldog, but that of course is a low wing craft. There was a fatal crash of an RAF Bulldog, involving an instructor and a student, when it had engine failure just after take off with low fuel. No explanation for the crash was found but it was thought to be fuel related.
My crash was not too dramatic because, once I had seen the fields, I felt that I was in control during the whole procedure, apart from the chap next door who alarmed me a bit. I really did have George to thank for that and there is no doubt in my own mind that continuous training for all eventualities is essential if you are going to go flying..
Unfortunately, at that time, our company was starting to experience trading difficulties because of the advances in computer graphics and I was unable to fly as frequently as I would have liked. Finally, after retirement, I could no longer afford to keep the old dear and sadly, she had to go but as you know, she went to a very good home.
Postscript
Aviation has always been a factor in my life and I realise how lucky I am to have experienced a range of its different facets. To be able to design, maintain and fly aeroplanes is, I suppose, more than ones fair share of the cake in this unfair world. And now I am able to start all over again with simulator flying, which fascinates me but which I find considerably harder to master than the real thing. I am also grateful that at my age, I am able to recall some of the memorable events and happenings of the past (Please don’t ask me what I had for breakfast this morning).
Going to fly-ins and displays, sprawling out on the grass under the shade of the wing on hot summer days, meeting lots of interesting aviation people, cloud hopping among the cumulus, returning in the smooth evening air as the sun goes down, dropping in to someone’s strip for afternoon tea by the river and giving them flights in return. Halcyon days, indeed.
A number of the people that I have mentioned are no longer with us and it saddens me to think that so much talent is no longer there to be called upon.
I will conclude with a few photographs, mostly of the old lady, in a separate post. Generally, they are of poor quality so please accept my apologies. My excuse is that I didn’t take them.
That’s all, Folks!
Ralph
