BEA Vickers Vanguard
 

Were the Merchantman freighter conversions done at Heathrow?

At least some were. Bay 20, IIRC.

First one was done by Aviation Traders at Southend (G-APEM)

Thanks.I have a Vanguard window but tracing which aircraft it came from is impossible.

Wiki says two done by Aviation Traders, the other seven were completed by BEA using ATL kits.

(My mate converted his Airfix Vanguard kit in his bedroom using plans in some modelling mag article circa 1975 - looked very nice too when he finished it in the Speedjack scheme.)

Bay 20 ?
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....e1b82d7eba.jpg

Yes, that's Bay 20 (southernmost of the 5 bays facing Eastchurch Road). Bay 16 (the northernmost) was the paint bay.

All long gone, of course.

Spent some of my post Apprenticeship months there on; the other major job was cutting the outer off skin, in areas of the fuselage that had de-laminated, then fitting repair inserts and doublers.

Were the Merpati Vanguards converted there, or was that just heavy maintenance, no conversion. I can't recall if they had windows or not!

Merpati's Vanguards were passenger aircraft - 4 ex BEA/BA and 7 former Air Canada aircraft.

RE. Vanguard differences, I was once told that the BEA ones used OM15/ DTD585, etc., hydraulic fluid and the TCA ones used Skydrol. I think this is highly unlikely as all the components would have to have different types of seals.
Can anyone confirm please?

I have a window from a BEA example but don't know which aircraft exactly.

From those days, I understood that to be the case.

BEA Vickers Vanguard
 

Ref the Merpati Vanguards, the first two were a 951 on dry lease and a 952 on a wet lease. The 952 used skydrol,, the 951 dtd585. The 951 was G-APEF and still had the red wings of the BEA paint scheme. I last saw it parked on the cross runway at Kemayoran airport. The 952 came with a complete spares package in the form of a complete aircraft which was parked at the north end of the airport. UK expats maintained the 952, locals the 951. The routes were Jakarta-Medan, Jakarta Surabaya and Jakarta-Surabaya-Makassar- Biak.

Interesting.

TCA/Air Canada's Vanguards overlapped with their Viscounts for many years - I wonder if the latter used Skydrol too ?

Never came accross a Viscount using Skydrol.
When we were getting the Electra at Channex someone ordered some Skydrol. It sat in the stores for years as the Electra used DTD585/H5606/OM15 (Red stuff).

Aviation traders
 

Did this company design and build their own aircraft once?

Yes, the Accountant. The figures didn't seem to add up though...

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....ed43c950e1.jpg
Plus the Carvair which was a DC-4 with a new nose and a DC-7 fin...

DC-7C fin. The -7 and the -7B had the DC-6 fin.

I have always wondered about the enormeous fin of the Accountant. Probably of the smal momentum arm of such a short aircraft, is that correct? I also wonder about the long tail cone, looks like a submarine detection system. Anybody an idea?

washoutt It's the anti spin parachute housing.

DH106, hadn't realised only the C had the bigger fin, only place I've seen 7s on the hoof was Cockroach Corner and I identified the 7s largely by their fins - maybe they were all 7Cs, there weren't many even then nearly 40 years ago. Lots of 6s.

DC4 - rounded windows
DC6 - squared windows, three-bladed props
DC7 - four-bladed props.

PSA in their early years in California, up against United and Western with DC6s, and with passengers savvy to this difference, painted squared window outlines in black paint round their DC4 windows :) .

The long-lived Merpati Vanguards were part of a (then) Indonesian government regulation that allowed competitors to Garuda on domestic flights, but not jets, which only Garuda were allowed. It gave a last hurrah for passenger Vanguards and Electras.

The Merchantman conversions had a number of oddball assignments. Taking the female panda Chi-Chi from London to Moscow zoo for a "date" with their male panda An-An (nothing resulted from it) was one such in front of all the media. Returned in an Antonov 12. More interesting but less prominent was they were used on several flights to take the BA-specified and UK-built cabin fittings for the first BA Tristars to the Lockheed assembly plant in Palmdale, California, routing via Montreal and Calgary, ports where Air Canada engineers knew the Vanguard, and likely still had spares in the stores. It was unknown in the USA, where the Electra dominated. If you ever saw the two types side-by-side on the ramp, you realised how much bigger the Vanguard was than the Electra, in all dimensions.

WHBM, I am old enough to have seen the Electra and Vanguard together at LHR and you are so right, the Elkectra wa smore like an oversized Viscount and of course didnt have the deep and wide fuselage of the Vanguard which was still a pretty big aricraft up against 707s and DC8s. The only thin about the Electra that was bigger was the smoke trail

its actually hard to look back and compare .'giant airliners ' from the 50s and 60s to something like a 777. A few years ago I saw a DC 6 at Blackbushe and it didnt dominate its surroundings like I thought . probably no bigger than ATR 72 or similar . Itw as great to see and hear it , perhaps the last time I will ever hear the music of 4 big radials

Re. the Electra skoke.
We were doing training in the circuit at Birmingham one clear, still, winter's day and you could see the smoke hanging in the sky where the previous circuit had been. After about 5 or 6 circuits the whole sky had a hint of brown about it.
I wonder what Greta would say?

"How dare you!"

Re Indonesian Vanguards, Alexander Frater recounts a trip on a "Super Viscount" during his Beyond the Blue Horizon odyssey - I assumed it was a Mandala Electra from the description, but it's been a while since I read it and no idea where my copy is. Anybody got a firm idea of what he did fly on - I vaguely recall him saying it had radials but I'm sure he or I have got that wrong? Can't even recall the airline...

Always fascinated me too. He didn't actually travel on it, despite the best endeavours of a ticket tout. It was a Merpati Vanguard, his error was mistaking Mandala for Merpati. Alex, Australian, would be very familiar with the Electra, as his father was Chief Medical Officer of Health in Fiji (mentioned in the book), and the Qantas Electra ran there and on to Tahiti all through the 1960s. It doesn't have radials of course, but does have a notably large cowling. Both Mandala and Merpati had Viscounts, then Mandala went for Electras and Merpati for Vanguards. The book trip happened in 1984, 10 years after BA withdrew the Vanguard.

It's one of my favourite books, and he is excused the odd technical lapse :) .

There was a long Propliner account back in the late 1980s by someone who went to Indonesia and rode on all of the Viscount, Vanguard and Electra, the latter a lengthy all day trip the length of the country via intermediate stops.

Frater didn't fly on it, but had a look around. It was Mandala. "Its four engines looked like antique air-cooled radials, and even the three-bladed propellers had been burnished...What was it? A converted Flying Fortress? A restyled Lanc? Or something built locally from bamboo and hammered Capstan cigarette tins? I tried to find out."

"I approached the marshal "Viscount" he snapped. "That's no Viscount". "It's a Super Viscount""

My guess? Most likely an Electra.

I only found this because I've recently read the book, and knew where to find the bits.

I actually like the way it looks but naming an aircraft ‘Accountant’ ?


Doesn’t really grab the imagination..

It was a calculated risk.

Haraka, thanks, makes sense. Did many aircraft prototypes have special safety arrangements, like this anti spin paracgute, or the tail rockets on the Fokker 100 for deep stall trials? I rember it also had a belly slide to evacuate if need be.

Thanks for the info about the Super Viscount, chaps! I must search the book out and read again, one of my favourites also.

Washoutt, I think the prototype Concordes had a crew escape hatch to make simplify bail out in an irrecoverable situation, not found in the production aircraft.

I've seen quite a few pics of light aircraft with anti-spin 'chutes fitted over the years, presumably while exploring low speed or aerobatic handling,

OK, I'll repeat the old joke about the Accountant,
Originally the plan was to have three prototypes.
The Accountant
The Auditor
and
The Receiver
Despite the howls and denials, the word in the industry put the Avro 748 very much in the frame as greatly benefitting from what was learned.the hard way by Aviation Traders.

This is a good article on the ATEL Accountant: https://www.key.aero/article/atl90-a...-counting-cost

Freddie Laker must have been behind the Accountant prototype, being CEO of ATEL at the time. A less beancounter-like aviation executive is hard to imagine !

The fuselage is all double curved in shape. therefore high production cost.

At Abingdon in May '62, I saw a twin engined aircraft of this size which I knew wasn't an AV748, so surmised it was an accountant.
Little did I know the Grumman Gulfstream had arrived in the country.

Here's the writing on my window.

https://i.imgur.com/2zcbolI.jpg

I wonder if "W905" is still with us.