Throbbing Javelin
 

In the mid-60s, I was an aircraft tradesman at Tengah and recall hearing a peculiar throbbing noise from the engine(s) of a Javelin straight after startup. I was told that this was not unusual but cannot recall what the cause was said to be (resonnance, unburnt IPN fuel from the starter system?). Can anyone please comment?

Of course, after 50 years, my memory may be playing tricks. Moreover, at the time, I was young, single and in Singapore so may have been preoccupied by throbbing of a different kind!

This seemed to be a characteristic of the A S Sapphire engine,probably intake resonance. On the web somewhere is an audio of 24 javelins doing a flypast, distinctive " Blue Note" but not like a Hunter or Meteor. Ah, nostalgia......

I thought the good looking ones batted for the same side so to speak.

I was always under the impression that the Sapphire 'Warble' was caused by the fixed Inlet guide Vanes (IGV's) at low RPM.
Sounded quite impressive on Victor 1's :)

On a quiet night in my garden in Swaffham I could clearly hear our Victor 1s taxying at Marham. As you say, a very distinctive "warble". A tad underpowered for the Victor, but I never knew a Sapphire let us down in the six years I was there.

Sapphire Warble
 

Yes,
Very distinctive during taxi and positively wierd at night. Made me think of wailing banshees for some reason ( possibly a combination of Irish blood and Guiness ).

As in, "I hope the earth really IS curved!" :ok:

CG

The Sapphire
 

Tankertrashnav, guess you were not on the early Victor 1 when we had the "centre line closure" problems with the Sapphire, not fun but resolved with the abrasive coating put inside the compressor cases to just scuff the tips of the blades to give a bit of clearance, I remember it well having to jack up the wings to get the engine doors to crutch up after many engine changes, I still have a couple of engine door bolts in the garage just to remind me what fun we had !!!!

zetec2,
centre line closure was also a feature of the same engine in the Javelin. A trick of the engine fitters at Middleton St George (33 Sqn) was to ground run the engines just when the film was starting in the cinema. The tin roof used to resonate in tune with the rumble and render the film almost inaudible.
If my understanding is correct the J35 may suffer something similar and the solution may be akin to the old method.

Throbbing Javelin
 

Jetpipe resonance.

zetec - no you are correct, by the time I made the acquaintance with the Victor the centre line closure problem had been sorted, thank goodness.

charliegolf - absolutely! Also the combined efforts of the rear crews pulling up on their seats as we approached the end of the runway used to help ;)

Javelin jet pipe resonance
 

I recall that it was caused by jet pipe resonance. I recall that there was a simple way of stopping the resonance by just increasing the idle revs slightly after start up. At Akrotiri the resonance could be heard distinctly in Limassol across the bay so it was SOP, especially at night, to keep it to a minimum. Happy Days

"Throbbing Javelin" would make a great username! :cool:

My only Javelin memories from the Tower at Tengah in 67 was the weekly incidents ... either the slipper tanks blowing off of startup, due to something to do with a starter vent being blocked, or the very agricultural u/c downlocks failing, leading to the Javelin sliding sideways off the runway.

Tower trainees were warned to expect a "Crash State One" on a weekly basis. Poor Javelins, they had had a hard life, and 64 and 60 with their Mk 9(R)s were the last in that distinguished line.

A fascinating beast - there was something about them that I simply 'liked'. I have no idea why ... perhaps it was their age?

Throbbing Javelin
 

Slight thread drift: anyone know what causes that distinctive Vulcan howl at takeoff? Didn't seem to affect all marks. The sound track to my childhood includes that eerie banshee echoing across the fields from miles away. Hearing it again as an adult instantly raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

It might interest all the responders to my original post to know something of the background to my query. I was passed some information from someone who was at Akrotiri around 1957 and thought that had seen evidence of a secret spy plane. He had been told to move away from a well-guarded part of the airfield, saw a wing shape that, years later he noticed on a B2 bomber, and heard an exhaust with a throbbing sound. He had read reports that the Aurora made a throbbing sound and now thought that he had witnessed an Aurora.

I have reported back to my correspondent that, in my view, 1957 was far too early for the hypothesised Aurora to have been flying in development, far less operationally; that the B2 wing shape is optimised for low-observable, subsonic rather than hypersonic flight; and that, if some sort of secret spy plane had been involved, it was more likely to have been a U2. I also tentatively explained the throbbing noise as possibly emanating from a Javelin, which I think were based in Cyprus at that time, as I had heard something like this while serving in the Far East.

Thank you to all those who replied to my query and confirmed that the noise I heard was indeed from a Javelin and made it likely that this was also the same sort of noise reported by my contact. I wonder if the "B2-like" wing shape that he had seen could have been on a Javelin viewed at an angle that superimposed the tail plane on the main wing and gave the appearance of a jagged rear edge.

I may have misconstrued your comment, NutLoose, so to clarify matters, the throbbing was mine! It was a phenomenon that, along with with prickly heat, us "singlies" had to endure for the whole of our tour. That's what I tell my wife, anyway.

Yes, MPN11, Javelins did slide off the runway quite often - rather elegantly as I recall - until they reached the monsoon drain! Truly a fascinating beast - big, butch, attractive in a sort of ugly way and pure British; rather like me.

Awful old photo-album scan, and I had a cheap cr*p camera too, but join me in saying the last [front line] farewell to The Dragmaster.

This posted for historic record, rather than artistry ;)

Curious that there's a dead fly in that album page that's doing a fairly good impersonation of the Markhor in the sqn badge ... how strange! :cool:

http://i319.photobucket.com/albums/m...TC/Scan_1.jpeg

Here's a couple for you MPN11 (I am sending these via an iPad, and the transfer may not be successful):


https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/bT...qg=w1912-h1230


https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/eD...rQ=w1912-h1230

Those last two pictures are brilliant!

Bratman, not showing here. You might need to upload them to the likes of photobucket.

Agree ... sadly Bratman's aren't showing.

Gemini Twin ... "Those last two pictures are brilliant!" Thanks, I said mine were cr@p, but at least they're they're historic :D

BTW, the 'scrapping' was done by Chinese labourers with sledgehammer and pickaxes in F [?] dispersal, right in front of the Officers' Mess. Gross.

Here are the two missing photos from my earlier post; the originals were so large that they distorted the web page so I asked the Mods to remove them until I could repost with smaller versions.


http://i1383.photobucket.com/albums/...psf6wcebyz.jpg

http://i1383.photobucket.com/albums/...psccv8rtl5.jpg

I think that this was the 60 Sqn HQ:

http://i1383.photobucket.com/albums/...psnhcqky0g.jpg

Still not showing :(

Hm, I don't understand this - they showed up in preview and also after I posted them. Back to the drawing board, again?

The links are there but the photos are not displaying (if you click on the little boxes, you may get an option to download or something similar).

Edit: I have had another go at adding the photos to the posts above. They are there right now bit they may disappear as my previous attempts I made.

The morning after the evening disbandment ceremony at Tengah on 30 April 1968. Final line-up before disposal. Bitterly regret not getting closer for individual shots of the airframes.

http://www.pprune.org/<a href=https:...699d201b_z.jpghttps://farm6.staticflickr.com/5263/...699d201b_z.jpgJav Line-up001 by Janner88, on Flickr

Also, six of 60's finest overflying Butterworth on 12 Aug 66 to mark the ending of "Konfrontasi".

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4124/...2a10ef67_z.jpgIMG_0005 by Janner88, on Flickr

Unfortunately, cannot see Bratman's images, or the little boxes, either.

Lauriebe, please do me a favour and tell me in easy steps, how did you load those photos. For the life of me I can't find any way of creating a photo album, adding an attachment or uploading a photo. I have the photos on googledrive or on my iPad. Many thanks.

Thank you. Very nice.

Bratman, I see you have now sorted out your photo posting problem. Good shots and, yes, that was 60's dispersal at the southern end of Tengah's runway,

I took my last line-up shot from the ground floor of the Transit Block which can be seen on the right-hand edge of your last photo.

BTW, I load all my photos from Flickr. It's good site and you can resize images to fit here.

Bratman - thanks for your efforts - well worth it as they are super pictures (I love the old Vauxhall, by the way, Singapore was full of old cars that had all but disappeared from British roads at that time).

I was fire officer at Seletar at the time, and one night we had an unexpected visit from a Javelin after the airfield had closed. An airman walking along the road which crossed the runway from East to West camp when a Javelin appeared out of the darkness, flew just over his head, and plonked itself down on the runway just past him. Cant remember what the problem was but it must have been a pretty dire emergency for him to choose not to attempt to make it to Tengah, only a few miles over to the East. Do you remember the incident?

Thanks for your persistence, Bratman91 ... the memories come flooding back :)

• ISTR that the corner of the Transit Block was the location of the old post-war ATC, until our posh gin palace was constructed halfway up the airfield on a small 'hill'.
  
• The LCN of the old Javelin dispersal was quite low in comparison to rest of the airfield, and was indeed well south of the r/w 36 threshold. So it was that one day a VC-10, rumbling all the way to that end, missed the taxiway turnoff to 36, and carried on into the dark and unknown world of 60's dispersal [from where another taxiway led back up to 36]. This error was spotted from the tower, and a frantic call of "Keep moving" [with appropriate explanation] was broadcast ... until eventually the VC-10 made it onto a more suitable surface. That area is still shown clearly on Google Maps/Earth.

Tankertrashnav ... I remember hearing about that landing at Seletar, but I can't remember why it happened. There's a lot of difference between r/w 36 and 03, for a start!

Thanks for the photographs; they have triggered all sorts of memories.

In 1964 60 Sqn’s establishment was increased to give us a total of something like 26 aircraft and 36 crews, I believe we were then the largest squadron in the RAF. The aircraft were a mixture of FAW9 and 9R, the usual fit for the latter model was to carry 2 Firestreaks and 2 x 230 gallon underwing tanks, which enabled us to lengthen our low level sorties by about 30 minutes, so extending the range of our border patrols from the Kuching and Labuan detachments.

S (XH908) was one of the 9R and my logbook shows I flew it on a “combat air patrol” from Labuan on 22 Feb 65. At this time IIRC the responsibility for the Borneo detachments was shared between 60 & 64 Sqn. During the first half of 1965, 64 took over the whole Borneo task while 60 had responsibility for the air defence of Singapore and mainland Malaya. There was an exchange of airframes between the squadrons so that 64 had all the 9R aircraft and XH908 must have been one of the fleet transferred, as by June my logbook shows a different airframe number (XH779) as S. From MPN11’s photo S must have reverted to 60 Sqn later, probably when 64 disbanded,


The IAF (QRA?) arrangements at Tengah were something of a one-off. Gombak wanted a 5 minute state, but this would have meant the crews being in cockpit and was ruled out because of the ambient temperature. Manning the alert states from the air conditioned crewroom was required, but ordinarily this meant holding the duty at Alert 10, which was deemed to be too slow; after something of an auction we were tasked with maintaining Alert 7 from the crewroom. As the flight line was so close both to the crewroom and the 36 threshold, there was never a problem in achieving the scramble time, even when the crews were sleeping when the order was given. It may be worth noting the at the height of Confrontation we had up to 12 aircraft on alert, some on 7 minutes and the rest on 30.

Friend of mine whom I met in Loganair was on the Javelin in Singapore and had a centre line closure, at night, whilst out low, over the South China Sea!


Concentrates the mind he said! (Hi Alan, if you read this!).

Hello, NutherA2 ... I find it endlessly fascination how one thread stirs up memories of the past, and brings forth so many interesting little facts of those days of yore!

• I arrived at Tengah in Oct 67 just after 64 disbanded. All the spare Javelins were then parked across the runway in F Dispersal [the one in front of the Officers Mess]. As the remaining months of the Javelin's existence with 60 wore on, there was the occasional movement of aircraft across the runway, as 60 swapped airframes with a 'better one' from the 'spares collection'. I suspect any remaining 64 Sqn markings were quickly over-painted with the black and silver stripes of 60 ;)
• OC 60 at the time was Wg Cdr Mike Miller ... 'his' aircraft letter actually displayed his full initials. MHM

On the subject of cockpit heat stress, Flying Orders required the Canberras to be airborne within 10 minutes of the crew getting on board, leading to some interesting taxying priorities for the Local Controller.

Comment from original poster, Steve Waddington, on youtube:

"In 1966 my father ( Flt lt. WDS Waddington) was based in RAAF Butterworth ( Malaysia ). This film was made for a local competition, which they won, much to the frustration of the other entrants who complained about the unfair advantage they had. Not everyone has access to a Jet Fighter.."



Again uploaded by Steve Waddington. You can hear the distinct warble on start up.

"This film was shot in 1964 by John Parsons. John was a Navigator with 60 Sqn based at RAAF Butterworth & is featured in the film at 3:40 donning his helmet."

If anyone in interested, the link below is for a video file that I believe shows a QRA of 60 Sqn Javelins at Tengah, although it seems very slow compared to the Lightnings on Battle Flight at Gutersloh when I was there in the early 70s. The original video was probably professionally made but has perhaps been degraded by changes of format and is rather poor quality. I cannot recall where I downloaded it from - perhaps from Youtube although I can't locate it. Anyway, thanks to wherever I got it from. EDIT: thanks to Steve Waddington, see previous post.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bz_k...?usp=drive_web

You are probably correct, NutherA2, in saying that 60 Sqn was the largest in the RAF at the time. I seem to recall that 60 Sqn C Flight was deployed to RAF Gong Kedah and that this was close to, or even, 12 aircraft. Happy days!