Appeal for information: Hawker Siddeley Trident _technical_manuals_ and descriptions
 

I am seeking to buy detailed technical descriptions and manuals of all marks of the HS 121 Trident. Not aircrew ones, but rather _structural_repair ones and/or _illustrated_parts_catalogues and/or similar. I would most appreciate offers of such literature (please send private messages).

I am making and donating a set of drawings of the Trident to Save the Trident, for them to use inside G-ARPO once completed, in printed matter, calendars, monographs, to sell to magazines and websites, etc.

So far, I have drawn the Trident 1C...

Drawing an airliner is a difficult task: information is often unavailable and where it is, it can be ambiguous or conflicting. I have referred to lots of old photos I took of HS 121 1C G-ARPH before she was broken up at Cosford, plus photos from Save the Trident, plus literally thousands of online photos. There are a couple of sets of "walkaround" style photos of Tridents online, but sadly they are rather cursory and cover the subject rather unevenly. I have also purchased four crew manuals covering the 1C and 1E; they are sadly of very little use for the job in hand. I also have three sets of wonderful Aircraft Engineering magazine articles on the HS 121 1E, 2E and 3B (and am about to get a set covering the 1C).

I know there are several viewable airframes in the UK (a 'clipped-wing' HS 121 3B at Manchester [plus one at the Science Museum Wroughton closed facility] and a HS 121 2E at Cosford), plus at least one HS 121 1E and a good few 2Es in China, but I am in Bulgaria...

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Just to add: the original APU location, the RAT housing, the pylons' tops, and the engines' tops mystify me most. Wing tops are a constant source of worry (as are wing bottoms, really...). Trident 1E wing skinning is a particular mystery (and no, I am not about to go to China just for the pleasure of photographing Mao's HS 121 1E at the Datanshang museum, however tempting the thought might be...)

Many thanks in advance for all replies!

The autopilot, autoland, and flight systems were made by S Smith & Son (England) Ltd later Smiths Industries Aviation Division at Bishops Cleeve and Kingsditch Lane near Cheltenham. We actually had a complete system in the lab in CH4 and many people have experience, and may have retained documentation.

I would suggest contacting the company to find how material was disposed of, also you might contact people by writing to their pension scheme and to the Cheltenham Echo. I was a mere apprentice then and am now over seventy, so you may have a chance of contacting those responsible at the time.

Names I can recall are Norman Sigourney, head of Multiplex Lab, Bruce Ward I worked for, and a sea of faces, will try to recall names.

It was a wonderful lab to work in, full of really bright people with the latest test gear and the walls were covered with graphs showing the magnetic characteristics of the various materials our magnetic amplifiers were made from. Our ATR cases were full size with doghouse, and packed with Ledex switches (solenoid actuated rotary switches) micro-relays (we made our own) and magamps (we made those too). Everything ran on 400Hz, the servo motors used R&Q (refence and quadrature), the most used instruments were R&Q meters.

In Test Equipment I worked for John Stark, one of the many Smiths Riley car enthusiasts and we were making a portable tape player called SADIE for Smiths Automatic Diagnostic Inspection Equipment, which contained a four track tape player capable of running to and fro on the various voice tracks as faults were diagnosed.

Around that time Mr Majendie invented the barbers pole director display, a patent search on his name should bring up the full patent.

The general principle of the Smiths autoland was that there were three totally separate channels all the way to the control surfaces, where two good ones could win out over one faulty one. Different from the Elliotts system on VC10 which had much more cross-voting on the way through.

Sorry, rambling a bit, hope there was some help there. All the best with the project. :ok:

Thank you, Henry, for a fascinating posting! (I wonder whether the Mr Majendie was related to the famous BOAC captain, or indeed the same man..?)

Contacting the companies is an idea I shall definitely have a go at, thanks!

I've gone down all manner of weird and wonderful avenues (British Library, Patent Office Library, now part of the Brit Library, and the Science Museum Library) and - incredibly- none of them has anything other than the same potted illustrated books one finds in Ian Allan bookshops... (not that there's anything wrong with them, but...) Discovered a couple of HS sales booklets, two in Zurich and one in Auckland believe it or not and had them shipped across to the Sofia Nat Library in August, only to find them full of sales type prattle and no hard info at all...

It may be stating the obvious, but the format in which you're most likely to find Maintenance Manuals, IPCs, etc for the Trident isn't hard copy, it's microfilm.

That's certainly what we were using in the hangars by the time I was first let loose on Tridents (early 70s).

Dave, I certainly have access to microfilm readers, so no prob there. It's finding the bloomin' things that's the problem!

Patent US3418458 - Visual indicating devices for aircraft - Google Patents

Sorry Skippie, yes the inventor was Capt AMA Majendie, as you say, the famous BOAC Comet Captain. The patent was assigned to us at Smiths and I saw him being shown round during a visit. I'm going gaga, henry. :ouch:

PS - another name, John Butler, he had the most magnificent cigarette lighter made of a magneto which you cranked to produce a spark which lit a spirit burner. All beautifully painted and polished, mounted on a large paxolin base. Work of art.

It might be worth checking the museum at Cosford as I remember taking a whole load of these, including, I think, those for one variant of the Trident up there about 30 years ago.

The De Havilland Museum has a Trident 2e 'Forward Fuselage' on their list of aircraft.


In fact I thought they had a whole fuselage a couple of years ago but perhaps I'm mistaken.


Perhaps they have some associated documents too.


de Havilland Aircraft Heritage Centre

Am no to Cosford at the moment, thanks, MrNosy2.

Am a habitue of the Hatfield museum's HS 121 2E. Am sure I've flown it many times, too (flew the Trident 2 as a pax at least 17 times in the 70s and 80s - which ages me) but haven't got onto them for info... Darn! Thanks, Hipper!