N7777G Connie

[SpringHeeledJack]

Afternoon fellow ppruners

I just had a query answered on the spotters forum concerning DUB and a couple of planes sitting on the apron in front of the SR Technics area (possibly the ex-Aer Lingus maintenance area). This query was duly answered, but then i got thinking about some years ago. I remember there was an L-1049 that sat there for a good few years N7777G, though this was in the 70's/80's so perhaps i am incorrect. It was without titles and was either white/grey/whatever. Would any of the esteemed members on this forum have any info and/or experiences with it ?

Why was it there and where did it go ? Was it scrapped ? I seem also to recall that there were Aer Tuaras (sp?) CL-44's there as well, though my addled brain might be flattering to deceive. Aaannnd i've just remembered there were a couple of B707/720 that sat there too. It's funny how the memory links one thing from another even though i haven't thought of them for many years.

Regards


SHJ

[norwich]

N7777G, Still alive and well, in TWA colours at Wroughton Museum, there is lots more history to follow, but a "borrowed" photo to start with. Keith.

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii58/keithnewsome/N7777G.jpg

[Liffy 1M]

Try these links for a start. Many 707s and 720s passed through the hands of Aer Lingus's maintenance facilities at Dublin over the years, so you may have seen different ones from time to time.

http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?regsearch=N7777G&distinct_entry=true
http://www.airliners.net/photo/Bahamas-World/Boeing-707-321/0505893/L/
http://www.airliners.net/photo/Aer-Turas/Bristol-175-Britannia/1019686/L/
http://www.airliners.net/photo/Aer-Turas/Canadair-CL-44J/0930143/L/

[SpringHeeledJack]

Wow! So that's where it (connie) ended up.....The period that i would have been seeing it was in the mid 70s approx and it didn't have the Aces High colour scheme. How did it end up in DUB in the first place ?

The other photos from Liffy 1M were evocative, just how i thought that i remembered the Aer Turas CL-44's and Brittania's. The B720 was also one of those remembered, that one seemed to languish at Collinstown for ages. Thankyou lads! Any more info on all the suspects much appreciated.


Regards


SHJ

[Feather #3]

And indeed, it's an L-749.

G'day ;)

[Fris B. Fairing]

This is how she looked during the Rolling Stones' Far East Tour of 1973.

http://www.adastron.com/squawkid/n7777g.jpg

[SpringHeeledJack]

Lovely photo Fris B

That's strange, as it has the same red stripe etc that photos a decade later have, yet my memory of it was that it was white/mono colour. Maybe the 'rest period' at DUB was colourless due to no owner/disputed ownership ??? Any Dublin ppruners here or ex Aer Lingus/Turas engineers who might have worked on it or the 707/720s ?

Regards


SHJ

[Bigt]

Was this the connie that operated in the UK and Europe during the early 70s. Poss by a operator - Lanzair?

Seem to recall it did some animal flights.

Poss based at Coventry?

[treadigraph]

Feather #3, all those people who read this thread, and not a one of us spotted that!

SHJ; the Connie was brought by Aces High for use in the BBC TV series "Airline" which followed Ruskin Air Services as a post war DC-3 operator. The plan was for a second series and the Connie would have been a natural progression from the Dak. Sadly the second series was scrapped and the effort to get the Connie airworthy and across the Irish Sea to the UK for filming was abandoned. Fortunately the Science Museum stepped in otherwise perhaps she would have been scrapped. Would have been nice to see her flying though.

Bigt, this was one of Lanzair's aircraft, several of which were scattered around Europe in the 1970s and 1980s either impounded, wrecked or u/s. N11SR was another reg that I can recall, tho I never saw any of them flying. :{

[SpringHeeledJack]

So.....

http://www.ruudleeuw.com/tmp-photos-8.htm

This link down the bottom of the page seems to explain comprehensively what was going on with N7777G before and during it's time at DUB. It would seem that the FAA kept grounding it, anyone like to hazard a guess as to why? :confused: You'd wonder why they just didn't re-register it onto the UK or Irish registers.

Regards


SHJ

[norwich]

There was another Lanzair (Channel Islands) connie, based at Shannon in the same period, this was N11SR, photo attached, this one was a L-1049, it was later impounded in Kuwait ! I seem to remember the reasons for impoundment was lack of paying for fuel, landing fees, parking fees etc ?? This one has a blue / white colour scheme ? Does this confuse thing even more ? the photo was taken 31 July 1975. Keith.

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii58/keithnewsome/1009900M.jpg

[irishair2001]

:):):)Well SpringHeeled Jack,

A few more of the exotic birds that were around Dublin in the 70s and 80s included ex Aer Lingus 720s that had been sold,leased or reposessed from Transpolar of Norway,you had 707s of Air Commerz of Germany and Montanaflug of Austria,Air Guinee 707,a nice colour scheme and one year we had a Yugoslav Air Force IL-18 transporting Irish troops to Cyprus,Worldways of Canada 707s and also in the early 70s an Argentinian cargo operator flying a Canadair Yukon,did a series of flights from Dublin,IIRC they were called Transportes Entros Rios os something like that,also in the early 70s Austrian Airlines used to fly summer charters from Dublin via Manchester to Salzburg with Viscounts,Sterling used to fly studendent charters with their DC-6s and I remember going to Dublin one Wednesday afternoon and to my astonishment there was 2 or 3 Aeromaritime DC-6s sitting on the apron and also one Saturday when I was at Dublin a UTA DC-8-62 did a couple of rotations to Paris with students.

Hope this is of interesr to you.


Regards irishair2001

[SpringHeeledJack]

irishair2001

At last, a bona fide Collinstown spotter! ;) Well, the list that you provided was certainly evocative, i remember seeing a fair few of them over the period. Do you remember the colour scheme of the aforementioned N7777G after it was grounded ? I'm sure that it was all white/all grey/all whatever, was it different ?

The 2 main 707's and 720 that i remember were the Bahamas World already shown in Liffey1M's post and perhaps the others i saw were nigerian. Any photos ? Did one of the 707's have a strange colour scheme, somewhat like Court Line/Braniff. Small details, but i want to see how accurate my memories are/were.


Regards


SHJ

[BEagle]

Which was the Super Constellation intended to be used for 'pirate TV' broadcasting by Ronan o'Rahilly as TV Caroline (using the US 'Stratovision' system, I think?).

I vaguely recall that a UHF colour test transmission was alleged to have been made from the North Sea area in the early 1970s, but no-one ever saw anything.

[Liffy 1M]

SHJ

At DUB, N7777G was only ever in the colour scheme depicted in the airliners.net links that I have posted above. The "Aces High" titles were added quite late on in its sojourn here, the reasons for same having already been described by Treadigraph.

I don't recall a Court or Braniff-style 707 but there were several 720s of Aeroamerica (Berlin-based US carrier) which were nearly all in different colour schemes. If you use the "search" function on airliners.net you should be able to turn up quite a lot of older Dublin photographs, though there are more from the 1980s than the '60s or '70s.

[Newforest2]

Pirate television by Stratovision

In 1969 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969) news stories began to appear in the United Kingdom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom) that Ronan O'Rahilly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronan_O%27Rahilly), the founder of the pirate radio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_radio) ship based service called Radio Caroline (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Caroline), which at that time was not on the air, was about to launch Caroline Television (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Television) instead. His plans called for two aircraft, one in service and one as a relief, which would transmit commercial television programs to Britain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK) by Stratovision. Although these stories continued for some time nothing became of the project. To date no pirate radio or television service has ever operated by means of Stratovision.

Wikipedia.org

Hi Beagle, so says Wiki!:D

[Feather #3]

Treaders,

It wasn't spotting; more like intimate knowledge after a global attempt at engine swapping involving columbines [not the sweet variety], preservation [of the Southern variety], famous planes and curatorial conservatism. Not too sure that anyone won from this, but the "integrity of the exhibit" has been preserved!! :rolleyes:

G'day ;

[SpringHeeledJack]

Switching momentarily back to the 707/720s that i think i remember in the 70s, i looked through the files of A-net and could only find the Bahamas World and the Air Commerz one with a big golden 'C' on the tail. However it is bugging me as to what the other one's were that seemed to be nearly permanent residents due to the roll of the dice. Are there any other databases where one might bore oneself searching for photos of N7777G/707/720s in DUB during the 70s ???

Looking at this one though, i spied in the background what i believe to be the 'lovely' high rises of Ballymun :eek: Anyone confirm ? Jaysus, i had a few scarey moments in those estates back in the late 70s, early 80s.

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Montana-Austria/Boeing-707-138B/0557718/L/&sok=V0hFUkUgIChhaXJjcmFmdF9nZW5lcmljIExJS0UgJ0JvZWluZyA3MDcl JyBPUiBhaXJjcmFmdF9nZW5lcmljIExJS0UgJ0JvZWluZyA3MjAnIE9SIGFp cmNyYWZ0X2dlbmVyaWMgTElLRSAnQm9laW5nIDM2NycpIEFORCAocGxhY2Ug PSAnRHVibGluICgtIENvbGxpbnN0b3duKSAoRFVCIC8gRUlEVyknKSAgb3Jk ZXIgYnkgcGhvdG9faWQgREVTQw==&tbl=photo_info&photo_nr=27&prev_id=0611462&next_id=0555824



Regards


SHJ

[SpringHeeledJack]

Having little better to do with my self today after the jollities of a weekend wedding, i have further looked through photos and believe that one of the other 720/707s that i saw sitting in DUB was :-

http://www.airliners.net/photo/AeroAmerica/Boeing-720-027/0170147/L/&sok=V0hFUkUgIChhaXJsaW5lID0gJ0Flcm9hbWVyaWNhJykgIG9yZGVyIGJ5 IHBob3RvX2lkIERFU0M=&tbl=photo_info&photo_nr=24&prev_id=0283923&next_id=0142994

It might even have been this one as the registration seems to ring a few bells and the colour scheme definitely maybe :p


Regards



SHJ

[Liffy 1M]

Try some of these:

http://www.worldairpics.com/photo/1011050/M/
http://www.worldairpics.com/photo/1012158/M/
http://www.worldairpics.com/photo/1013414/M/
http://www.worldairpics.com/photo/1014002/M/
http://www.worldairpics.com/photo/1017516/M/
http://www.worldairpics.com/photo/1017517/M/ (this was the second Bahamas World 707, which flew away after several years in storage)

http://www.worldairpics.com/photo/1017617/M/

http://www.worldairpics.com/photo/1021542/M/ (yellow & brown colour scheme!)