Ah, Hawker Tempest I... ?

Typhoon II/Tempest I HM599,Sabre IV,extended radiator ducting on wing l/edge,and revised front cowling.

OH if correct....

Beaten by Treadds..

treadigraph, you have control!

It was indeed HM599, the sole example of the very clean prototype Tempest I.

The latter days of the Tempest V amused me. Being posted to fly the RAF's last and most powerful single piston engined fighter at RAF Sylt, a German holiday resort much frequented by naturists, was considered to be a 'bad boys posting'!!

I started off thinking Griffon Fury!

Try this one which popped up on Google...

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....89c86ad21e.jpg

Good articles in `Aeroplane` about what ` might have been`.....

Option Air Reno Acapella, a zombie-child mutation made from bits of Bede BD5s, of all things.
If I was going to design an aeroplane I think I'd have started somewhere else!
Still, it looks pretty and was evidently fast.

Out on a pub crawl in London, so before I get dragged onto the next establishment and potential oblivion, I'll declare Meleagertoo correct!

Here's an easy one


https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....d93fe4e0db.png

At a guess...French...?

Clever cropping of the Bellanca tri-motor?

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....ed9e0f16df.jpg

Full image - spot the trouser legs!!

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....e4c1d23c16.jpg

Bellanca 28-92 indeed!

A bit weird, having two completely different types of engines (although of generally similar configuration, inverted, in-line six cylinder, air cooled); must have been some reason for the designer to go down that route! Actually, I suspect the centre engine (Ranger), by its unusual, triangular-shaped air intake was an inverted V-12 (V-770), as used in a few aircraft, such as a single engine lightweight fighter (P-77?) and an infamous Curtiss 2-seater seaplane for US Navy, built in some hundreds.

Once again Noyade pulls the rabbit out of the hat.

I have this vision of him sitting surrounded by a million volumes of aircraft pictures and he looks at our pathetic offerings, thinks, spins around and pulls the right picture out at once............... ;)

It sometimes feels a bit like that! So many of these challenges are craft I've never even heard of before (as are almost all that I now choose) even after a professional aviation career as a 'bit of' an aviation nut.
Still, to we mere journeyman aviators the virtuoso is rightfully an object of some awe as he sits at his unrestricted universal aviation rolodex and just flicks up the right image...
Roger Bacon was right. Few of us are cut out to be T.A.P.s

Allright Mephisto, do your worst!

Thanks Mel!

As time marches on I do find I spend more and more time on the PC looking for these machines rather than looking through paper references. The computing power of my mobile phone alone would be greater than anything I have on bookshelves. I found the Bellanca on my phone in bed with a dog on my lap. In fact, for most of two years now I haven't been able to reach many bookshelves due to Achilles tendon reconstruction to both feet. :ouch:


https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....edac94bcaf.jpg

But I'm more ambulant now and back at work, so I did reach for a book to scan this one.......:ok:


https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....e3b7d3cdb0.jpg

Correct - a true TAP

lets guess - European?

Not European.
I was trying a meleagertoo crop - of another tri-motor.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....b06fd9b549.jpg

I will probably regret asking - but what sort of person is a T.A.P?

Total Aviation Person..:D

A phrase coined by "Roger Bacon", purported writer of the "Straight and Level" page at the back of Flight International.

https://www.key.aero/forum/historic-...l-and-farewell

"Flight " has always run a really good quiz just before Christmas - one way to be a "TAP" is to get most of the answers right.

"Uncle" Roger Bacon was the (fictional) name of writer who wrote "Straight & Level" - the irreverent final page of each edition of Flight

Straight & Level still graces the monthly edition but IIRC they retired Uncle Roger when they went to a monthly edition.

the cockpit looks bit like a Fokker XX but its not

I think its the Ogden Osprey.......................
The Ogden Osprey was a three engine, high wing monoplane airliner which seated six. Designed in the United States and first flown in the spring of 1930 or earlier, six were built and some used commercially before Ogden Aeronautical ceased trading in the Great Depressio

Roger Bacon was (mostly) the late Mike Ramsden; one of our fellow PPRuNers, also very sadly late and greatly missed, was an erstwhile defence editor at Flight and seemed to share JMR's wonderful sense of humour so I suspect he may have shouldered some of the responsibilities of producing Straight and Level each week. Haven't read Flight in a very long time - not even surreptitiously in Smiths - so no idea if S&L and TAPs are still prevalent amidst its august pages...

It is indeed. Over to you A56. I'm not the only TAP here then. :ok:

I still subscribe and S&L is still there in the monthly print edition (TBH I find the web based stuff a turnoff) - there are occasional references to TAPs but the humour isn't quite so edgy

In the latest edition (march 23) they have a go at Megans claimed flight on ANZ from Mexico to the UK (?). problems with mobile phones at an Airbus event, retained domain names for dead airlines and the horror of seeing O'Leary having to host a Ryanair press event in a luxury London Hotel with canapes instead of the usual shack with coffee and boiled sweets. They also do "From the Archive - 1923. '48, '73 & '98"

Surreptitiously reading Flight (or rather scanning the Jobs pages) in Smiths because you couldn't afford to buy it. That takes me back!

took forever..................

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....87d21547d8.jpg

I bought Flight weekly for a while, then discovered Pilot circa 1983. But S&L drew me like a Siren's call, so a quick shufti each week was a must.

Are we looking at a tailwheel?

Miles Marathon

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....6050921a56.jpg
wait 24 hours......................

Oncemorealoft has it - the Miles/HP Marathon

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....5107c8720c.jpg

Thank you. Open House please.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....fea7b5dbee.jpg
Here you go!!

Looks like the Martin -Baker MB5 but it can't be as that had contra rotating props.

Correct - it isn't the MB5!

looks like a big engine but the cockpit is well forward - I have a nagging sense I've seen it before - back to the William Green books I think

'cockpit is well forward' like as in Fairey Firefly?

Possibly the Folland f108 testbed???