Originally Posted by BEagle
Didn't the FG1 also have permanent 12th stage blow with flaps down, whereas in the FGR2 it was normally 7th stage, but 12th stage was manually selectable.
Certainly the FGR2 used bleed air from the 7th and 12th stages, but as to selectability.......I'll just pop up into the loft and see if my course notes are still there.
In the meantime, I recall that our Coningsby FGR2's had manual wingfold whereas IIRC the (early) FGR1's had the hydraulic wingfold. I can clearly recall an incident in the ASF hangar at Coningsby when a team of guys were folding the wings by the somewhat dodgy manual method. This consisted of about three guys underneath pushing up whilst two stood on top waiting for the outer wing to be raised sufficiently for them to grab hold. Of course, as the outer wing reached nearer and nearer to the vertical, the guys underneath had less and less leverage whilst the ones on top couldn't really help much until the wing was almost vertical and even then, as their feet were hard up against the hinge, they could only steady the wing rather than pull. Not quite sure what triggered the event, I only heard the resulting thuds as the outer wing fell from the nearly vertical, struck one of the lads underneath squarely on the head and then with considerable velocity into the fully extended position. The biggest talking points revolved around the fact that the ambulance from SSQ (a few minutes walk from the hangar) took about 15 minutes to arrive and take away the unconcious J/T. We all assumed that he would be whipped away to Nocton Hall for x-rays and were dumbfounded when he was released from SSQ that afternoon sans x-rays etc (but it was a Friday afternoon.....). I wonder what the H&S people would say about this nowadays (risk assessment? - wots one of those?). Actually, it would have been a good thing for the H&S polizei to have been around then as we had to endure, on a daily basis, the use of multiple diesel engined hyd rigs and houchins in the hangar as the electrical supply wasn't man enough to run the electrical equivalents. One had to wear ear defenders all day and breathe a diesel fume-rich atmosphere as there were never enough exhaust extensions. Ah, happy days....
