Shorts Belfast for sale
ferrydude:
Let us just get one thing absolutely straight here.
I would not touch the Cairns Belfast with a forty-foot barge pole.
Sentimentality is one thing but I can guarantee you that anyone who gets involved is going to get their fingers burnt.
Apart from anything else, the Cairns Belfast was the most eccentric one of the fleet. She used to be XR365 and carried the name "Hector". You could get into "Hector" with five or six deferred defects in the tech log and by the time you got the other end, four of the defects had disappeared but another six new ones had appeared! If any of you out there can remember the wonderful BBC children's programme "The Magic Roundabout" then you will understand why the old girl was called "Silly Old Hector". It was certainly not a good idea to go flying unless she had a really good wet black nose.
By the way, I flew the very first civil-registered Belfast (if we are to forget that Short Brothers put the temporary registration of G-ASKE on the prototype XR362 for a photoshoot).
Which one? G-BEPS (XR368) at Manston on 14 February 1978.
Now I used to work for WR Christopher Foyle. After a huge amount of effort lasting about 8 years and long before the Berlin Wall came down, he managed to set up the Antonov Design Bureau operation. If I wanted to move anything nowadays then I would be looking for an Antonov 22, an Antonov 124 or, if it was particularly big and indivisible, the Antonov 225.
Let us just get one thing absolutely straight here.
I would not touch the Cairns Belfast with a forty-foot barge pole.
Sentimentality is one thing but I can guarantee you that anyone who gets involved is going to get their fingers burnt.
Apart from anything else, the Cairns Belfast was the most eccentric one of the fleet. She used to be XR365 and carried the name "Hector". You could get into "Hector" with five or six deferred defects in the tech log and by the time you got the other end, four of the defects had disappeared but another six new ones had appeared! If any of you out there can remember the wonderful BBC children's programme "The Magic Roundabout" then you will understand why the old girl was called "Silly Old Hector". It was certainly not a good idea to go flying unless she had a really good wet black nose.
By the way, I flew the very first civil-registered Belfast (if we are to forget that Short Brothers put the temporary registration of G-ASKE on the prototype XR362 for a photoshoot).
Which one? G-BEPS (XR368) at Manston on 14 February 1978.
Now I used to work for WR Christopher Foyle. After a huge amount of effort lasting about 8 years and long before the Berlin Wall came down, he managed to set up the Antonov Design Bureau operation. If I wanted to move anything nowadays then I would be looking for an Antonov 22, an Antonov 124 or, if it was particularly big and indivisible, the Antonov 225.
asmccuk:
It most certainly will include PSC time. In fact, that bit is already pretty well already written. What I am finding time-consuming is doing research to make sure that I have remembered things accurately. (For example, I got heavily into Willi Brandt the othe day vis a vis being intercepted by MIGs in the corridor).
I don't have any difficulty putting two sentences together (unlike some on pprune) but I reckon it will take me another year to get it all down and then possibly a bit to edit everything.
I am even considering the self-publishing option for, although that might be quite time consuming, I'm not writing a Joan Collins thriller and it would give me another challenge to keep me busy.
I would actually be very happy to end up with something like "Wilf's Book".
Moderator: sorry for the thread drift.
It most certainly will include PSC time. In fact, that bit is already pretty well already written. What I am finding time-consuming is doing research to make sure that I have remembered things accurately. (For example, I got heavily into Willi Brandt the othe day vis a vis being intercepted by MIGs in the corridor).
I don't have any difficulty putting two sentences together (unlike some on pprune) but I reckon it will take me another year to get it all down and then possibly a bit to edit everything.
I am even considering the self-publishing option for, although that might be quite time consuming, I'm not writing a Joan Collins thriller and it would give me another challenge to keep me busy.
I would actually be very happy to end up with something like "Wilf's Book".
Moderator: sorry for the thread drift.
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They still owe me for saving all the aircraft docs from the scrap bin when they cleared out Eng Control at Takely! 
Last edited by VP8; 10th Jan 2011 at 16:42.
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First flight of the Shorts Belfast freighter aircraft
AIR GIANT GOES UP - British Pathe
AIR GIANT GOES UP - British Pathe
If so, I can now understand why Shorts called it the Belfast but the crews called it the Belslow.
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
07/11/64 56-2014 Fatalities: 7 Near Goose Bay. Stalled after take off. Right wing dropped. Left wing dropped. Impacted nose high
On the Belfast's load capacity, in 1984 Heavylift delivered a very long and unbendable load to Ascension Island for onward delivery to the Falklands. The load was 57ft long which was longer than the floor of the C130 freight bay.
An enterprising mover schemed a set of trestles and loaded the cargo at the top of the bay so that the tail ramp could be closed.
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the unmodified ones were called Slowbacks and the modified ones were called Fastbacks.
I was looking through some old photos yesterday and came across a picture of a Belfast at the Leuchars Airshow in 1974. I had forgotten that the Belfast had an air refuelling capability. I remember reading about C130s refuelling from Victors during the Falklands War and how difficult it was because the maximum cruise speed of the C130 was slightly less than the minimum refuelling speed of the Victor. The solution was to carry out the refuelling manoeuvre in a slight descent. Was the air-to-air refuelling capability of the Belfast ever used and, if so, was it also conducted in a slow descent in order to keep up with the Victor? Or could the Belfast cruise faster than a C130?
411A:
The Slowbacks were 11% down in predicted performance in all respects (height, speed etc etc). The Fastbacks were back on specification.
The problem was the amount of drag created by the shape of the rear fuselage. The Slowback fuselage came to a very nice point which looked good aesthetically but turned out to be an aerodynamic disaster.
So the design team went back to the drawing board and re-designed the entire ar*e end. This terminated in a blunt shape but, more cleverly, two vertical strakes were fitted underneath the rear fuselage.
These strakes were of a high-speed elongated diamond aerofoil section.
When we used to go to Lockheeds in Atlanta to pick up replacement C-130 centre sections (they won't go in a C-130) to take to Marshall's at Cambridge for fitting to RAF Hercs, some chaps from the Lockheed design office would sometimes come out to look carefully at the Fastback rear end solution.
I believe one of our crews was told by one of them that Lockheeds would have liked to have used this solution on the C-130 but Short Brothers had taken out an international patent and it would cost them a lot of money to use the idea. How true that is, I don't know.
In-flight refuelling:
I only know of one of my colleagues who ever succeeded in making contact with a tanker during trials. The system was never used in anger. The biggest problem was that the standard high-speed drogue basket went round and round in three foot circles at Belfast speeds so the tanker had to be fitted with a special low-speed drogue which was useless for everyone else.
The second problem was that we had to land after 15 hours or so anyway to check the engine oil so there was not a lot of point in being up there for longer than that.
However, the refuel probe was a great bit of kit if you were flying from the right seat for it was great for pointing at runways and assessing drift!
The whole refuel kit weighed about 1,200 lbs. Surprisingly, our lords and masters didn't start taking them off until 1975.
The Slowbacks were 11% down in predicted performance in all respects (height, speed etc etc). The Fastbacks were back on specification.
The problem was the amount of drag created by the shape of the rear fuselage. The Slowback fuselage came to a very nice point which looked good aesthetically but turned out to be an aerodynamic disaster.
So the design team went back to the drawing board and re-designed the entire ar*e end. This terminated in a blunt shape but, more cleverly, two vertical strakes were fitted underneath the rear fuselage.
These strakes were of a high-speed elongated diamond aerofoil section.
When we used to go to Lockheeds in Atlanta to pick up replacement C-130 centre sections (they won't go in a C-130) to take to Marshall's at Cambridge for fitting to RAF Hercs, some chaps from the Lockheed design office would sometimes come out to look carefully at the Fastback rear end solution.
I believe one of our crews was told by one of them that Lockheeds would have liked to have used this solution on the C-130 but Short Brothers had taken out an international patent and it would cost them a lot of money to use the idea. How true that is, I don't know.
In-flight refuelling:
I only know of one of my colleagues who ever succeeded in making contact with a tanker during trials. The system was never used in anger. The biggest problem was that the standard high-speed drogue basket went round and round in three foot circles at Belfast speeds so the tanker had to be fitted with a special low-speed drogue which was useless for everyone else.
The second problem was that we had to land after 15 hours or so anyway to check the engine oil so there was not a lot of point in being up there for longer than that.
However, the refuel probe was a great bit of kit if you were flying from the right seat for it was great for pointing at runways and assessing drift!
The whole refuel kit weighed about 1,200 lbs. Surprisingly, our lords and masters didn't start taking them off until 1975.
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
The probe weight 110lbs IIRC and would have had a significant effect on CoG.
On AAR, the problem was the need to activate a refuelling trail as we did not have enough tankers to maintain a route. Nor did we really have enough aircraft to make it worth activating a route.
For instance V-bombers could deploy to the far east faster than the route could be activated. Fighters needed to be escorted so again a tanker-escort was faster than a tanker activated route. The exception was the interim Victor 1 tanker that needed the route to be activated for the Victor to refuel. For transports like the VC10 and Belfast it was cheaper to stage than flight refuel.
Only after the Falklands did long range flight refuelling become a necessity.