Originally Posted by
Rigga
My course was the first Airframe Mech course, as St Athan closed and transferred, at Halton, 1975. We had only Appo stuff around us so we had no idea what we were to be taught. But we worked on Sea Vixens, Hunters, Provosts and Gnats and even we did a blade fold on a Whirlwind! Cosford now has Jags and Tornadoes - controlled by spoilers and elevons (surrounded by massive cushions) no basic aviation stuff to learn on (in my opinion). You even have to do an introductory course to get familiarised on "helicopters" as, I believe, they don't teach that at Cosford.
Tailerons for Tornado and Tailplanes for Jaguar. The Jaguars system had a speed controlled differental mixer to use tailplane halves as roll control. Diff Tail.. The Shim was at the bottom of the pogo stick that allowed pitch and roll commands to be transfered to the PFCUs. Worn shim allowed backlash to built up on the system and cause the neutrals to be out of limits on minor checks . Never heard the term Elevons used on those aircraft and Elevons are not all moving surfaces, but trailing edge surfaces used on Deltas like Concorde and Vulcans. Oral airframe basic airframe structures fail..
