Low flying device
 

I was one of two groundrew that "saw"in Bill Houldsworth after his close encounter with the oggin!!Both of us watching as it taxied toward us with cables dragging from what remained of the radome!There was an ambulance in attendance and I seem to recollect a Siggy being escorted to it in shock!

They could've painted it a proper colour. :yuk:
:)

Gzorne, I know one controller drove his fighter confidently around the North Sea with the playmate as target. Sadly playmate was back at Leuchars u/s. :)

I am pleased to remember controlling an F15C once. I put him on 4 Buccs. Spoil sport didn't play the game and went Judy from the first call.

After he splashed one I asked if he was still happy, he immediately came back for boggie dope and I had great pleasure in calling 3 Buccs, 6 o'clock,3 miles.

I hated that kit but from time to time it did work.

Shackleton MR2 WR963
 

Magic hearing the Shack again. I believe that the "siggie" mentioned in the Bill Houldsworth incident was in the tail cone and nearly drowned by the inrush of sea water. It was always a temptation not to look out from the left hand seat when night bombing on the radar buoy off Northern Ireland!

Hi all,

Glad that you like progress so far, and many thanks to Pete (hunterxf382) for putting the video up. We would have taxied further but we lost a brake sac/bag on the port mainwheel, so we lost pneumatic pressure. This meant we had to turn around and come back before we couldn't stop properly. We have new brake sacs, so its someting that can be fixed fairly easily.

We're trying to get space to do the NDT checks on the spar booms this winter, but it can't be done outdoors as we have to remove quite a few access panels, some of the trailing edge, and the main landing gear doors and valences; so we're going to be begging and pleading for hangarage again.

In terms of fundraising, we are working through a Heritage Lottery Fund application to support a large amount of the money needed to get WR963/G-SKTN in the air again, though if anyone wants to donate in the meantime it all goes into the aircraft. None of us in the SPT are taking any kind of renumeration out of this.


Shackman -

It was a pleasure meeting you and we'll hopefully see you again soon. Sorry that circumstances put our taxying of the Shackleton so late in the day that you couldn't stay to watch.

denachtenmai -

We have the bottom section of ASV21, we have the original drawings for the middle section, and we're searching for a set of rams. It might mean a trip out to Cyprus to rob XF700 at Nicosia as she still has them in. As for the bomb doors, again - its back to the manufacturers drawings and out with the rivets. The fixings at the forward end of the original bomb bay are still there, we just need to sort out the Bitteswell induced hacksaw job.

linedog -

We needed a stand out colour scheme at the time, and by putting the aircraft back in the white it made her instantly recognisible. The plan for the next repaint is looking like being 205 Sqn colours, so back to grey with a white top and the light blue spinners. We also get to keep the (working!) Orange Harvest 'spark plug' rather than removing it and trying to refit the mid upper turret cupola we have. The eventual configuration we want to get our Shack back to is MR2 Phase III.


Kind regards,

Rich Woods
Shackleton Preservation Trust

Wot?
You mean the periscope for hunting submarines? :)

I wondered why it had a tide mark on it... :p

Rich, looks like you made a typo,so I've amended it, gratis. :ok:
Regards, Den.

Why not do a Concord/Concorde with light blue spinners to starboard and red spinners to port .....that will get the other sqns going; remember, you can please some of the people some of the time but....... :E

Wr963
 

First flew in it 14 Apr 1968 Capt Dave Hinchliffe Survex from Changi 11.40 Day. last flight in it from 205 was 7 Oct 1970 capt Bob Parratt Ex Logex from Whenuapai ".00day 7.20 Night.
Next time was as an AEW from Bitteswell to Kemble to be painted, on 2 Jun 1972 30mins day capt Sqn Ldr Green. Last time for me was 1 Aug 1972 Sqn Ldr Arnaud from Lossie to Kinloss as a fully fitted AEW 10 Mins day. All as a Sgt AEOp, the only AEOp or AEO on 8 Sqn at that time (AE Ldr?). Then on to Nimrods - another story

Was "963" one of those which went to Bitteswell in the late 70s for re-sparring?

If so, did 8 AEW manage to thrash the life out of that 'frame as well as the others?

It was always a pleasure having you on board to show the ex-Gannet guys how the AN-APS 20 could really work (on the odd occasion they let you near one!). Unfortunately they took umbrage - hence the one and only!

WR963 did have a re-spar at Bitteswell, the first of the AEW2 to be sent there in 1976. It was the second set of spar booms fitted, the first replacement being done for the Phase III upgrades to MR2.

8 Sqn got their money's worth thats for sure, with 15,483 flying hours on the clock. However, there's still a bit of life left in her if the NDT shows up no surprises... some 594 hours left until we reach the safe life on the lower booms. If the NDT does show up any problems we still have the spar boom and the fatigue remediation drawings in the archive, so a rebuild to flying condition will still be achievable but will take a little longer.

2015 Thread Update!
 

I've noticed that this thread needs a little update, and as a member on here as well as the webmaster for the SPT now, you might like to know that the trust's website has undergone a major overhaul and has a fresh new look!
Updates are quite regular as I'm part of the engineering team nowadays too so I am as keen as Richard to keep spreading the word on progress :)

Shackleton Preservation Trust - Shackleton Preservation Trust

Just to warn everyone, I just visited the SPT web site mentioned in the previous post and got a 'Malicious Software Blocked' alert from Norton Anti-Virus. I had just clicked on the History menu link. hunterxf382, can you get this checked out please.

Virus
 

Skyhawk, Norton aunty virus, don't tell me you pay for that? Its awful. Get yourself AVG or Avast free and excellent. I have just visited the site and its fine.

What Bill says. I'm not bad with a PC but have a mate who is a lot better, the first thing he does is un install Norton if he is fixing something.

I'm with Skyhawk on this. Definitely a problem on the History link - it even freaked my iPad out by popping up a link to some bogus 'you've won a prize' link.

I can assure you that the SPT website is not carrying anything untoward. One of the reasons I took over the site giving it it's new look is that I deal with pc stuff a lot, and the site was built very carefully and checked over thoroughly for a few months before going live. Normally any issues as described above are at the user end I'm afraid.

I have used Norton for years and it has worked well for me, I am an experienced software engineer and my PC is ok.

Norton flagged up a call which was made to an external (to the SPT site) IP address. I guess this was to the 'won a prize' site that Bus14 mentioned.

hunterxf382, if you are happy with the site then that is fine. I asked for you to check the site out and that is what you have done.