This shot of the P1127 trials on board HMS Bulwark off the Cornish coast may amuse those engineers who watch this thread. You may notice that there is an SAR Whirlwind 7 parked just ahead of the island - yup that's me! I went out to photograph the trial as the embarked Wessex 5s are not good for photography as the exhaust blurs shots taken from the cabin. I did one sortie and then needed fuel. I was made most welcome especially as it was a Sunday, and taken down to the ACRB for coffee. After a short while the flight deck engineer appeared and said that they could only get a couple of gallons of Avgas into the tanks so what should he do?
I guessed right away what he had done! The Whirlwind fuel filler cap - marked fuel - is very close to the engine oil filler cap marked oil! Those of you with long memories will remember that there was a one and half gallon airspace in the sump to allow for frothing. The engineers had topped up the sump with fuel. After much head scratching as Bulwark was on her way south west, they drained and refilled the sump with oil - no time to flush - filled up with fuel and off we should have went.
Guess what - the starter cartridge mechanism blew up so no start facility apart from hand swinging all 17 litres of Leonides. It takes 82 turns of the starting handle to turn the engine through one revolution! A team of hefty aircraft handlers lined up to do the necessary - I kept my finger on the high energy ignition button and another on the prime button - and after an eternity it fired on one then three then a few more and eventually was running. We thought it time to return to Culdrose as faces were starting to turn red in FLYCO at the thought of taking a Whirlwind to Gibraltar.
I have a feeling to this day that to fly home without doing all the necessray flushing may have been pushing it a bit............
