I flew the Trident for 5 years and for a serious answer to the question it did mean that you could take off down the middle of the runway without the boom boom boom down the centre lights. However, it also meant that we got occasional queries from other pilots asking if something may be wrong with our nose gear.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....e0d20590c7.jpg

Don't forget the BUFF

I got my answer ages ago, but what a great thread it turned out to be. And maybe I've done a favour and got all the ugly stuff in one place.

Nonsense!
This was such a beautiful aircraft!
Retro Thunderbirds look nowadays.
I love the Baade!

It's a Junkers concept for a jet bomber from WW2. It got built in the Soviet Union after the war and was test flown and crashed named samoljot 150. Then the team was permitted to return to east Germany and developed this modified passenger version. They even developed "Pirna" jet engines for it. It crashed too and the project got stopped.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baade_152

Surely Treadi,theirs flew 'light wing lo' Apologies if that's too Benny Hill for some people !

There were no particular issues with the Trident nosewheel offset when manoeuvring on the ground, as I recall. As already observed, the offset did keep the nosewheel off the centreline lights during takeoff and landing, thus avoiding the annoying thump thump thump experienced on other types. I always believed that the offset was built in for this reason, as the triplex auto landing performance was expected to put the aircraft exactly on the runway centreline every time. However, I learned later that it was that way to accommodate the larger than normal electronics bay that dealt with the auto land system. The one unusual effect of the offset was the need to add one clockwise turn on the rudder trim to zero the yaw effect of the offset wheel and gear door.

I wonder - did the Trident's nose wheels have brakes on them then - not for stopping the aircraft but for halting the wheelspin on retraction, since the sideways retraction would involve tilting the axis and thus induce considerable gyroscopic forces, unlike forward/backward retracting nose units.

There was still quite a lot of promotional material for the 'VL-DDR' Baade 152 lying around in one of the rooms at the Elbeflugzeugwerke training centre at Dresden when I was doing some A310MRTT work there some 15 years ago or thereabouts.

I still think that was hideously ugly!

The Trident's offset nosegear must have been pretty good as Fairchild Republic used it on that beauty of the sky, the A-10.

As for ugly, Australia's contribution, check out the Transavia airtruk.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transavia_PL-12_Airtruk

Well if you want "ugly" you surely have to include the exceptional efforts put in by Blackburn to include almost everything they ever made. Whether it be the Blackburd:

https://www.baesystems.com/en/downlo...4642571707.jpg

Or the Blackburn Blackburn (so fugly they named it twice):

https://www.baesystems.com/en/downlo...4642123130.jpg

Or the beast that dare not speak its name, the YAy/YA8/YB1 ASW offering (clearly intended to save ammunition by scaring Russian subs back to Kola):

https://www.baesystems.com/en/downlo...4617493689.jpg

I suggest while other individual aircraft might win on points, Blackburn obviously deserve a Lifetime Achievement Award and Fellowship of the Order of Quasimodo in recognition of their dedicated contribution to fugliness in aviation.

PDR

Old and Horrified / 777fly ,during your your time on Tridents,I imagine that you would have done some trips to Scandinavia,via a CLN SID,then turning left at DVR,and thence to DANDI.At weekends we were allowed to operate off-route,and such flights were usually turned left at or before CLN and routed direct to DANDI.This took you through the overhead of the T82 radar at Eastern Radar at Watton,by when you would be up at FL330 one of my colleagues wouid then always sent the assistant out of the Fire-Escape onto the roof to look for you,and if seen. he then would call you and say " Speedbird xyz,we have you visual ! I know it's a long time ago - 1980s,but I wonder if you remember hearing such an odd transmission ?

PDR, you missed out the Beverley.

Well the Beverley wasn't actually a Blackburn design - it was designed by General Aircraft who were subsequently taken over by Blackburn. There are more than sufficient true Blackburn examples available so there's no need to include bought-in ones. If you want more, well Roc and Skua are obvious, but what were they smoking when they penned the Cuberoo:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...urnCubaroo.jpg

or the Sidecar:

https://www.baesystems.com/en-uk/dow...4642569008.jpg

Don't get me wrong, there are good Blackburn aircraft. It's just that they are like intelligent brexiters - not exactly common.

PDR

You just can’t leave out this bad boy;--

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....acecdcff2.jpeg
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....190b4ab26.jpeg
and then was this thing, more landing gear than aeroplane;

Flew the Tridents but never even asked why the nosewheel was offset. Many offered answers to the unasked question anyway but one fave was that the Autoland was so accurate that it was annoying to hit every centre line light after landing.

I think a wheel brake was automatically triggered on selecting gear up but, gees, was a long time ago. I also experienced no handling problems during retraction ( but I was very gifted at handling) and never managed to keep wings level on airways anyway..........er, if & when allowed to fly the ruddy thing by pole hogging seniors !........

We didn't. See post #6.

Over the years, that attained the status of an urban myth.

Of course the reason for the offset NLG was related to Autoland, but in a rather less obvious way.

I always understood the original design included built in front boarding stairs? Resulting in nosewheel retraction sideways.

Lots of types have forward airstairs without needing a sideways-retracting nosewheel.

The extra space on the Trident that a conventional forward-retracting nose gear would have required was instead used for an avionics bay containing all the Autoland kit - some of it (the triplicated VRUs, for example) being pretty humungous, as I recall.