Originally Posted by
By George
During my early days in aviation I flew Bristol Freighters with Air Express based in Essendon Melbourne. If my memory serves me correctly we counted the blades passing the cockpit window, primed on the fifth blade, ignition on nine blades and off she went in a cloud of white smoke, crackling and farting away. Nothing quite like it. 1980 bhp, 56 inches on take-off. Amazing engineering to time the sleeves. 30 odd gears, it looked like a giant watch in parts. 20 gallon oil tanks and each engine used around 3 gallons an hour.
Funny thing, we thundered over peoples houses rattling windows and leaking oil and nobody complained. Different times I guess.
And By George, as a young boy I used to watch you from Frankston beach struggling to get some altitude and travelling at what seemed to be an impossibly slow airspeed as you winged your way to Tassie.
SB