Classic British Flight Sim

Hi Folks

A quick search here was negative,
so don't know if you'd seen this previously,
but thought it might interest at least one of you.



Was googling "Vickers Offshore" for ODG source material,
when I came across an ex-employee's reminisces
describing his previous work on the TSR-2 project, (50 page PDF).
Haven't read it myself yet.



It might be worth having a root through the other material on the site -
TSR.2 Memories Project



HTH
ATB
Paul

Brilliant find Paul, and thanks very much indeed for posting! I've downloaded the PDF for reading when lilun goes to sleep and had a scoot over his website, so nice info on the Jag too, (another one of my favourites)

Very much appreciated matey

Hi Ben,

There is a guy living in West Boldon who worked on the TSR2.

Your joking me George? Its a very small world. Its an aircraft I absolutely love. Just recently finished the George Edwards biography (I know Dave, I'll post it this week ) and I must admit I am now firmly of the belief that it was GE who ordered the destruction of the airframes. She was a phenomenal piece of engineering. I've a print of XR219 signed by Roland Beamont

It is a small world. We went to school together then to different universities and in 1959, he went to Bristol to work on TSR2 and I went to Avro to work on Blue Steel.

Its funny George. I worked with a guy when I was at Scottish & Newcastle who worked at the RAE in Farnborough in the late 70's early '80's. I would have loved to have been a young man in the 50's - 60's when all this aviation trailblazing was going on, but as Gary (the chap I worked with) said, it was probably very different when you were there at the time. Its easy for me to look back with rose tinted nostalgia as I was never there. If I could go back in time though, I'd love to have been there and involved, but imagine working on something like TSR2, or working at HP and seeing everything you'd done destroyed, I really don't think I would have dealt with that very well at all. In some respects the cancelling of the RJX, or more recently the Nimrod MR4, was a modern equivalent to much of the buggering about that went on back in the day. Absolutely soul destroying. So in many ways I've been very fortunate indeed. There are many that say if you love something and have a keen interest in it, avoid working with it as a job, and I suspect there is some mileage in that.

Thanks for that link - a very interesting read. I do not recall his name although he & I were obviously at Weybridge at the same time.
A few problems though, I do not think that the ejection seats were ever considered to rotate (it might have been an initial far fetched idea) & as far as I recall the aim was to be able to achieve an ejection at 600 kts with plenty of Blower tunnel tests being undertaken. (It was never achieved, 450 probably the best). (Not sure if the front fuselage at Brooklands was that test article or whether it was for the chicken gun).
There is no mention of the X2020 Lithium- Aluminium alloy used for the DB aircraft, & the follow on 11 aircraft were to use L73 in place of the X2020, & redesign was necessary for some items to incorporate all the repair schemes used in the DB batch. I think the front fuselage skins were chemically etched from 12G down to about .04", primarily so the thick areas would take the countersunk rivet depth. Saunders-Roe on IoW did the chemi-milling as they had the bath size necessary.
The temperature limitations in the cockpit also complicated the mounting of the internal equipment as to reduce the heat transfer from the external structure. There was also the requirement to provide insulation between the interior & exterior, so a urethane foam layer was over all the cockpit interior which was then covered in Glassfibre.
I left Weybridge in Jan 64 & we were already updating & producing structural drawings for the next batch.
But on the whole a different slant on whats available on the TSR2 Memories site (my memories are there).
Keith