RAF / RN Chinagraph Pencils (Cold War era) for Kneeboards

[Q-SKI]

Remember the method well, it was still more reliable than the infernal rotor tune box that followed! Any one remember BIM’s as well?

[MPN11]

Originally Posted by airpolice

About a year later I was posted to Northern and didn't need one as the T82 tracked with store dots, then I went to Border and had to learn to write sideways, from both sides, on a huge flat top display. Writing backwards was easy, and I never had to do it apart from at Shawbury, but sideways...

So where at NRD did you record all the details of the tracks you were controlling? On a flight strip?

At ERD we used the on-screen chinagraph cross. C/s top left, heading bottom left, FL bottom right and Type top right, with store dot number at the top of the cross. Or something like that. The Assistant, IIRC, kept track [in parallel] on a flight strip with the same data, for subsequent filing.

[ShyTorque]

Originally Posted by Q-SKI

Remember the method well, it was still more reliable than the infernal rotor tune box that followed! Any one remember BIM’s as well?

I remember getting many false "BIM" captions - and one very notable one which wasn't false...we were extremely lucky that blade didn't fracture - only the front part of the main D spar was left and "on it's way"; everything else aft of that was cracked through.

[The Oberon]

Originally Posted by Saint Jack

We're up to Post #100 and still no one has mentioned how absolutely essential a chinagraph pencil was when performing tracking of helicopter main rotor blades after maintenance. Each blade tip was liberally marked with a different colour chinagraph, then with the rotors turning at normal RPM, a "tracking flag" was slowly - very slowly - moved to gently "kiss" each blade tip in turn. This left a coloured mark on the flag corresponding to the vertical position of each blade relative to the others. From this adjustments could be made to get the blades "in-track" which helped, but didn't guarantee, that the helicopter would be smooth in flight.

Also extremely good for hiding minor scratches on your car, the ones that won't polish out.

[John Eacott]

Only one chinagraph seems to have survived our last house move; hopefully 819 don’t want their knee board back!

North Sea hacks may remember the deviousness of having multiple rigs with the same NDB frequency, and also the Decca chain fixes?

[ScottBouch]

Many thanks to all who have helped contribute to this thread, and the kind donations of pencils and refill leads!

I have now updated the web page on them, please see here: British Aircrew Chinagraph Pencils | ScottBouch

Any errors in the web page, please do let me know so I can improve it!

Cheers, Scott.

[MPN11]

Glad to have helped with leads.

Everyone should have a hobby

[ScottBouch]

Haha, this is just one of far too many!