Short Belfast

[MoateAir]

My father crewed the Beverley out of Thorney, and I recall him telling about a trip back from Sardinia once with a good headwind. The captain had brought along his cine camera, and got some good footage over France of a steam train overtaking them.

[TeBoi]

I seem to remember some old MALM telling me a story involving some kind of water injection system to increase power for take-off? Does anyone remember about that, or was it the Beverley?

[ex_rigger]

Belfast

Yes the Belfast did have a Water Meths system and I presume it was used down route as required. I remember topping them up at Brize.

[ex_rigger]

Shorts Belfast

On the subject of heavy, bulky loads, in Dec 1975 I went with a JATE team from Brize to Dorval Canada in XR 365. We went via Goose taking a number of families out for Xmas. It took us 8.5hrs to get to Goose and some of the time airborne was spent playing football in the empty freight bay.
At Dorval we loaded a B747 simulator for BA at Heathrow. To get this on board I had to lift the main oleo`s about 13inches and drop the nose oleo so the load could be slotted in. It was an extremely tight fit and before we left Brize we measured each upper door apperture to find the largest ie 365.( Yes they were all different by enough to matter).
Once loaded we were at a max all up weight and ended up coming home via Gander and the Azores.

[GOLF_BRAVO_ZULU]

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...=102481&page=2

See Serial 27

[Low Ball]

One Long Ride In A Belfst

I never flew in an RAF Belfast but used to watch them disgorge lots of Army helicopters at Aldergrove in the old days of squadron roulement.

Then many years later I got my ride in a Heavy Lift verson Gutesloh to Al Jubyal via Alexandria for fuel and crew change. Beds, seats, a loadie who was a master of the 'fried egg sarny' and the bench seat in the back of the cockpit where we could sit and observe the take off and landings. Two Lynx and a Gazelle (main rotor blades only removed) in each the Belfast flew the majority of 4 Regt AAC's helicopters out to the Gulf for GW1. Coming back six lifts of C-5 but thats progress and it wasn't so comfortable.

Low Ball

[scroggs]

Originally Posted by Bigt

Did I read somewhere that each belfast was designed for a particular role? Each airframe was slightly different re the ramp and handling equipment.....

They weren't built for different roles, but they were all built individually, rather like ships - no computer-built modules to nanometric accuracy! There is a story (which I'm pretty sure is true) that in the late '60s, in an effort to use all this new freight capacity, the MOD attempted to charter the Belfasts out. The Americans decided to take them up on this, as they needed to move some rocket stages (Atlas?) and had nothing large enough and available at the time. A team was duly despatched to Brize to measure a Belfast up, and it was declared that the payload would fit - but it would be tight.

Another aircraft was then scheduled to pick up the load. Everything was prepared, and the movers started winching the rocket into the freight bay. But it didn't fit! In some crucial dimension or other, the Belfast deployed was significantly different from the one measured...

[DX Wombat]

I've added another photo to the list in my previous post. It was taken a year or two earlier than the others when we had the first PPRuNe Museum Bash at Cosford.

[Blacksheep]

You can imagine the effort that was needed to make this happen and not without just a few ADD`s and LIM`s.

I don't need to imagine it, I was one of the poor suckers who had to work through the night in the freezing rain, so that 53 could have their nice photographs on the crew room wall.

43,000 hours for ten captains? Thats only 4,300 each. In the real world you'd need 5,000 to get on a command course...

[...of course that's only 5.5 years flying for a civvy pilot. ]