With regards to the missing "D" maybe John S being a near local lad is using local dialect/spelling?

Hansard.....


HANSARD 1803–2005 → 1940s → 1945 → November 1945 → 7 November 1945 → Commons Sitting → ROYAL NAVY
R.N.A. Station, Culrose (Road Material)

HC Deb 07 November 1945 vol 415 cc1253-4 1253
§4. Mr. Stokes asked the First Lord of the Admiralty in view of the decision not to proceed further with the Culrose R.N.A. Station, Cornwall, whether he is aware that loads of clinker, stone and tarmac are still being delivered to the site in spite of the fact that this material is needed for the repair of local roads; and if he will now terminate this waste of road material.
Mr. Alexander My hon. Friend is under a misapprehension in thinking that it has been decided not to proceed further with this station. It is essential to finish certain parts of the work to prevent serious deterioration, and this applies to the partially completed roads and runways for which this material is required.
§Mr. Stokes Why is it necessary to complete roads and runways when it has been decided not to complete the aerodrome for some years yet? Is my right hon. Friend aware that all this material and labour is urgently wanted elsewhere, and that there are complaints all round regarding the waste that is taking place?
Mr. Alexander My hon. Friend is really never satisfied.
§Mr. Stokes No.

I suspect one reason why the ASaC wasn't mentioned is the MoD (not RN) PR machine would be scared of the obvious question "So what's replacing it?"

At least they would have plausible (if not entirely sensible or reasonable) answers for SAR, ASW, SH.

I think he looks like a cross between John Betjeman and Jonathan Meades! Thoroughly enjoyed the programme.

Posted over on the Flypast Site

http://forum.keypublishing.com/attac...1&d=1362139796

Seaking Chesil beach - Key Publishing Ltd Aviation Forums

Perhaps because in the history of aviation no helicopter has ever found and successfully sunk a submarine............................!

or am I wrong?

Running for cover from the Pingers now.........................:O

Most likely slotted the odd whale or two back in 82, However a Helicopter has found a sub and attacked it, causing major damage.....Just wasn't a Sea King and the sub wasn't submerged.

Out of interest, can anyone tell me why Sea Kings have one of their main rotor blades painted yellow? Is it to increase visibility of the rotor disc when in motion or something?

Exactly that, when viewed from above.

More likely that stores ran out of green/black ones ;)

George Cross or George Medal?

Either way, they were both impressive to listen to.

George Medals:

Viewing Page 12275 of Issue 52218

Utterly humbling.

"Utterly humbling"

+ 10

Very impressive work.

Not surprised that the BBC avoided discussing the Baggers. What do they do ?

According to this, Baggers drive Daggers :) :

I thoroughly enjoyed it. Well done the BBC and MoD.

Re. CulDrose pronunciation by 'locals' ... NO!! we don't leave out the D!!. Apart from that, rather a lot of 'cringe-making' in JS's presentation, poor editing and little appreciaion of the aircraft as distinct from the people who operated it.
Would probably have spoiled the story to point out that a SEARCH & rescue helo is not best served by a SEARCH radar which is blanked in the forward direction by the gearbox 'shadow'. I know, it didn't matter for 'pinging' but S&R ?? It COULD have been so much better - the helo, that is.
Oh and for the usual BBC bashing suspects, the Beeb was the commissioning customer NOT the programme maker.

Out of interest, can anyone tell me why Sea Kings have one of their main rotor blades
 

I seem to remember it happened by accident when I was at Lossiemouth back in the 80's. I think we had a Sea King fitted with a light grey blade which was very noticeable from above. Later the yellow blade was introduced as some protection from all the fast jets with small windows and short sighted pilots.

CJ

I think we have to distinguish between the basic aircraft, which is superb, and equipment. The original radar had a 28 degree blind arc and, as you say, was acceptable for ASW. This imitation was understood and at the first opportunity, only a few years after Mk1 ISD, a development contract was let which resulted in a 14 degree blind arc (approx) and much higher power. (The spec was written by RRE).

In this period, the RAF took delivery of the Mk3 and retained the old RN radar with the large blind arc/low power. When they had the Mk3A approved, in about 1993, the RN were getting shot of the newer radar as Merlin was due, and offered the RAF sufficient scanners, transmitters etc to upgrade. Not quite free of charge, but a lot cheaper than what they did, which was get a digital processor and colour display, which left them with a hybrid which was neither here nor there.

Part of the problem here was that even into the mid-90s the RAF's radar maintenance policy was 1A, 2BC at RNARW Copenacre, 3BCD at Fleetlands. The problem was RNARW had closed in about 1983 (!) and the entire 2/3 line burden fell to Fleetlands. But, as the RN had replaced this radar, Fleetlands' capacity had been chopped by 80% (as 80% of aircraft now had the new radar).

Allied to this, RN observers were trained on the RNGT, a raw radar. They expected noise paint on the screen. But many RAF observers were trained on the BPRT, and in 1989 we had the ludicrous situation whereby, despite having inherited 140 old radars from the RN, the RAF didn't have enough serviceable out of a stock of 180 to fit a 20 aircraft Mk3 fleet. Well over 100 complete radars were "awaiting final test" at Fleetlands at any one time. Poor or non-existent training meant the operators were rejecting them for "noise", as they expected clean "digital" displays. There was a 99% No Fault Found Rate at Fleetlands, but the test bottleneck meant a backlog. In one 3 month period around this time, every single Sea King Mk3 had a complete radar change, every day. Not one of them was u/s. That was a far bigger problem to MoD than the blind arc.

I remember us going to Finningley to suss the problem. My oppo (best radar diag in the MoD) was standing next to the radar instructor in the aircraft on the pan. We could see the nearby church spire, but little else. He said, if with go up to 1000', that's still all we'll see. My mate reached across and tweaked Swept Gain and the screen lit up. "FFS, we're not allowed to touch these controls". Yes you are, the ones you can't touch are under this screwed down flap. Two days later we delivered a full training rig and documentation. And we dropped £80 in the mess bandit.


The German version (Mk42 I think) overcame this by having both nose and dorsal radomes, but this was a different radar.

I missed first half so only twice heard him commend this fine British aircraft. Please tell me that early on someone mentioned Sikorsky and GE.

You gotta love pprune.

Somebody makes an asinine statement about pingers and how a blind arc doesn't matter to them
Somebody else confirms this and suddenly it's fact!

For your information, it is vastly more important and limiting to a pinger aircraft that there is a blind arc than to the glory boys sittting around watching sky waiting for some **** to fall off a cliff.