What is it about the Wessex that makes people so fond of it?
Chief Bottle Washer
I guess this would make a lot of peeps fond of the Wessie 
potty people who flew and maintained them and the mistakes/adventures they had
212man, surely all the years he spent after that in Nigeria were adequate penance for those few moments of madness?
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it was also the sometimes potty people who flew and maintained them and the mistakes/adventures they had.
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I took this pic. on the promenade at Lyme Regis C.1972, when I was a sprog ATCO at Portland. The SAR Wessex was giving a winching demo with the local lifeboat when something went tech and it ended up 'feet wet'. The lifeboat had to tow it ashore where Trumpton can be seen hosing out the salt water. The pilot (a large bearded fellow) insisted that he had made a 'Mayday' call, although none of us in the radar room at portland had heard it. A protracted search of the tapes revealed a very feint maydaymaydaymayday in amongst the background noise.
Last edited by delta96; 17th May 2008 at 11:41.
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Loving the Wessex 5
To really bore you to death, I have been reminded of an article I wrote for "Cockpit" some years ago on the end of the Wessex 5 in RN service. Some of you may recognise yourselves!!
Well, it’s gorn, finally and irretrievably, gorn. A lovely old helicopter that was already an old design when Westlands (those well known makers of garage doors) got their hands on it and turned it into the Wessex 5. The stories surrounding the aircraft are legion,……. its reputation for rugged, safe, if not always reliable, flying making it a firm favourite with those of us who were lucky enough to fly it. I suspect never again will we have a helicopter that has such a superb single engine performance and such enormous reserves of power when both were running. Some of the torque figures pulled are firmly burned into the minds of those who just kept pulling on the collective lever to avoid impending doom!
The well known Commander (Air) of a Naval Air Station who managed the ultimate in Australia by pulling so much torque that the complete head came off must surely hold the record for over-torqueing, though I am sure that as a Helicopter Warfare Instructor (HWI) he wouldn’t admit to ever looking at the torque meter even if he’d known where it was. Luckily the head came off on take-off, so the dozens of Australians occupying the fourteen available seats all came tumbling out of the back whingeing but unscathed. Engine-off landings were a fertile area for experiment, and it surely was one of the few helicopters that could be safely ‘engined off’ without having to use the collective lever. All it took was bags of nerve, even more speed than normal and a certainty that no one important was watching you! The resultant flare and interesting rearward tilt to the rotor disc made it a spectator sport of some note, with many cries of “Chicken” over the radio from the not so brave, as it was very obvious when someone cheated and used the lever! Did I say cheat by using lever? Strength at all ends of the machine was always a great bonus. No one who saw the brilliant arrival in dispersal, after an air display rehearsal at Yeovilton, will forget the Squadron Commanding Officer’s dashing arrival as he bounced the tailwheel off the top of a ground power unit with a good twenty degrees nose up, recovered, and landed for the second time in front of his surprised and by now very nervous marshaller. There was the chap in Singapore who returned to dispersal after an Instrument Training trip (supposedly being conducted at several thousand feet) that had a goodly portion of the main telephone cables between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur wrapped neatly round its nose and undercarriage!! It was bad luck, that one,…. because he only hit them while avoiding a train!
A WESSEX in Borneo returned from a trip to a very hot and high mountain, complaining of a vibration which was easily explained by the large lump of tree that was still embedded across the tail; in front, yes in front, of the tail rotor! A particularly good demonstration of the ruggedness of the old girl was amply demonstrated on an Instrument Flying (IF) trip in Cornwall. The pilot was the Sqn CO, who had the added disability of being a Royal Marine and to whom IF and quite a lot of other things, like holding a knife and fork, did not come naturally. Well at the end of the trip, to the IRI’s surprise, (No, I was never an IRI) the aforesaid RM was on centreline and glidepath (though glidepath has always struck me as a singularly inappropriate name for what a helicopter is doing at the time, certainly not ‘gliding’) and so the IRI decided to let the Jolly Green Giant continue below break-off height and see what happened! Well, it did, didn’t it, the aircraft struck the ground a shrewd blow at a steady 90 knots and stuck there as the combined team of IRI and RMJGG could not work out what to do next or even who had control at this stage! Wings knew what to do, he picked up his phone with one hand and watched the aircraft with his other, because if you see the disaster you legally cannot be on the Board of Inquiry! Well, the aircraft passed the tower slowing only slightly with faint wisps of brake dust beginning to show and a fairly impressive amount of rearward cyclic, finally coming to a halt at the runway intersection. The subsequent debrief was not entirely dominated by the IRI, as is usual, Wings seemed to have an awful lot to say.
To my certain knowledge it is also the only helicopter ever to have successfully taken on a SEA HARRIER in air to air combat and won, forcing the damaged stovie to return to base unable to continue, whilst the victorious and gallant Wessex crew, of which I was the Captain, landed at a nearby inn and celebrated their historic victory. This followed a mid air collision in cloud and did result in a little cosmetic surgery required around the tail wheel area of the Wessex and a new tailfin for the Harrier. Spookily, the Air Traffic Team on watch at the time happened to be a husband and wife, one of whom was controlling me and the other Willie Macatee, a USMC exchange Pilot in the Sea Harrier. More importantly than these very important details was the fact that husband and wife had fallen out at the time of the incident!
If the Wessex 5 had a weakness it was its tendency not to start when it was really necessary. It damned well knew when you were on a VIP trip and would flatly refuse to start, but then after the chap had departed, fuming and late by car, would start as though nothing had happened! The attitude of “Command” was always to have a spare for a spare for a spare, especially at long weekends to ensure the job could be done. The dodgy starting was made worse in later years by the Engineers changing the batteries to smaller ones without telling the Operators. This certainly made going home for lunch or stopping off at a pub whilst in transit, a much more exciting business! No one to my knowledge ever got caught out by “Them”, but several Wessex have been known to fly quite long distances on one engine to a place where it could be admitted that the other would not start! It knew when things were really serious though and rarely failed on a SAR mission, or on one glorious occasion in the days of short exhaust pipes, when an aircraft in the middle of a line of 18 others on Salisbury Plain did a wet start and set fire to the grass! They all started wonderfully that day!!
When it first went out to Borneo this tendency not to start, especially when hot, meant that you did not shut down whilst pausing between tasks. However, to reduce fuel consumption and noise it was common to pull the speed selects back to about 200 rotor RPM or less (they would normally be at 230). The interesting bit came when you took off, especially if you forgot to push them back up again. The aircraft would stagger into the air, if you were lucky, down a slope, rotor blades coning like a ballet dancer’s arms whilst you struggled to get the revs back without the passengers knowing anything was amiss and of course before you struck the trees.
Radios were another interesting quirk of the early Wessex 5. It had a marvellous HF set that could receive every known commercial radio station from all round the world and the ability to talk clearly to Malta from the Culdrose local area. What it could not do, however, was to talk to Culdrose from the local area or any other Naval Air Station from any other area. Whether this was due to the Ops Wrens spending more time on their nails or perhaps the Ops Chief, than listening to deafening static for hours on end, we shall never know. To go with this marvel of technology the WESSEX 5 was fitted with a truly remarkable UHF set, the PTR 170. This was a lightweight set designed for the Whirlwind with the fantastic total of 12 crystallized channels and nothing else. The Whirlwind was lucky: the set was not ready in time, but instead of ditching it, some communicator who clearly had a vested interest in the thing, (probably future employment with the manufacturer, though anyone who would support the PTR 170 would make a doubtful employee!), kept the project alive and bolted it into the Wessex 5, presumably thinking that’s where it would do least harm. Even though 12 channels may have been adequate in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, they were understandably always the wrong 12 channels.
Now you may think that Junglies have enjoyed spending their lives flying as low as possible, but this is not so. We would have loved to join the Pingers flogging around in the clouds, idly glancing at instruments that patently lacked the correct attitudes, but we couldn’t talk to anyone. The only answer was to keep as low as possible and talk to no-one. After all, if you are lower than a delivery van, which does not have to get permission to enter the Heathrow Control Zone, why should you bother? Continental jaunts were made all the more exciting by the fact that the foreigners would not talk to us on our specially arranged frequencies, or would ask you to call approach which we did not have and then switch off on the special frequency! Back down to the delivery van flight level and pause at the airfield boundary in order to gain height to clear the barbed wire.
I had better clear up the low flying business, as the Wessex 5 spent most of its life there. To fly as low as possible is clearly still a prudent course of action, never mind the lack of radios that forced us down in the past. If anything drastic should go wrong you are much closer to that which is going to break your fall, ask anyone who has fallen off a barn roof (as indeed I have) and he will tell you “height hurts”. Teaching students to fly the Wessex 5 was another interesting pastime, as anyone who has followed the saga of modifications to the fuel computers and the plethora of pilots notes to go with them, will testify. Luckily, once again the fantastic single-engine performance made up for any lack of speed in dealing with the things and gave the instructor time to look up the correct actions as the student struggled with the wrong ones! The total lack of drama when on one engine was well demonstrated by an experienced Pongo on an exchange posting. On his final handling check at the end of his conversion course he did autos, approaches, landings and take-offs, all without noticing that the port engine had not been advanced from ‘ground idle’, where it was no good to man nor beast. On his re-scrub he did little better and was returned to the Army where his single engined flying skills would be of more use in their single engined aircraft.
Not always did the aircraft escape unscathed from these training exercises. Witness the two instructors who were practising Engine off landings by pulling the Speed Select levers (throttles) back on each other in increasingly difficult places. One pulled them at around 100 feet on climb out but the other chap wasn’t ready for it and failed to do anything, causing the rotor RPM to decay rather drastically. As the rotor RPM wound down they crashed straight ahead, having to climb out through the back of the cabin as there was a main wheel gently rotating outside one Pilots window and the ground filling the other.
The Wessex 5 has certainly seen life all round the world and it’s starring role in operations and disasters during its history are well known. Its greatest asset was that it was FUN to fly. You may not have been able to see out of it, you may even now have a bad back from its appalling seats and you may well never have seen your crewman’s face, but it was FUN. Chuck it about all you like and as long as you were smooth with your green gloved mitts, it would do almost anything and only retreating blade stall, tail rotor stall or your seat collapsing as the adjustor sprang out from the vibration, let you know that its limits were being approached!
Will the “Flying 290 Frame Crack” (Sea King Mk4) ever engender the same affection? With more radios than Currys, and bootnecks able to see if you have got the right map, I doubt it. Thirty degrees angle of bank the maximum and vibration that would shake the spots off a prostitute, pah! Fancy not being able to land with over forty degrees nose up for fear of breaking something, the Commando assault at Air Days will never be the same! We won’t see the likes of her again, more is the pity, but the venerable Wessex 5 was FUN whilst it lasted.
Well, it’s gorn, finally and irretrievably, gorn. A lovely old helicopter that was already an old design when Westlands (those well known makers of garage doors) got their hands on it and turned it into the Wessex 5. The stories surrounding the aircraft are legion,……. its reputation for rugged, safe, if not always reliable, flying making it a firm favourite with those of us who were lucky enough to fly it. I suspect never again will we have a helicopter that has such a superb single engine performance and such enormous reserves of power when both were running. Some of the torque figures pulled are firmly burned into the minds of those who just kept pulling on the collective lever to avoid impending doom!
The well known Commander (Air) of a Naval Air Station who managed the ultimate in Australia by pulling so much torque that the complete head came off must surely hold the record for over-torqueing, though I am sure that as a Helicopter Warfare Instructor (HWI) he wouldn’t admit to ever looking at the torque meter even if he’d known where it was. Luckily the head came off on take-off, so the dozens of Australians occupying the fourteen available seats all came tumbling out of the back whingeing but unscathed. Engine-off landings were a fertile area for experiment, and it surely was one of the few helicopters that could be safely ‘engined off’ without having to use the collective lever. All it took was bags of nerve, even more speed than normal and a certainty that no one important was watching you! The resultant flare and interesting rearward tilt to the rotor disc made it a spectator sport of some note, with many cries of “Chicken” over the radio from the not so brave, as it was very obvious when someone cheated and used the lever! Did I say cheat by using lever? Strength at all ends of the machine was always a great bonus. No one who saw the brilliant arrival in dispersal, after an air display rehearsal at Yeovilton, will forget the Squadron Commanding Officer’s dashing arrival as he bounced the tailwheel off the top of a ground power unit with a good twenty degrees nose up, recovered, and landed for the second time in front of his surprised and by now very nervous marshaller. There was the chap in Singapore who returned to dispersal after an Instrument Training trip (supposedly being conducted at several thousand feet) that had a goodly portion of the main telephone cables between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur wrapped neatly round its nose and undercarriage!! It was bad luck, that one,…. because he only hit them while avoiding a train!
A WESSEX in Borneo returned from a trip to a very hot and high mountain, complaining of a vibration which was easily explained by the large lump of tree that was still embedded across the tail; in front, yes in front, of the tail rotor! A particularly good demonstration of the ruggedness of the old girl was amply demonstrated on an Instrument Flying (IF) trip in Cornwall. The pilot was the Sqn CO, who had the added disability of being a Royal Marine and to whom IF and quite a lot of other things, like holding a knife and fork, did not come naturally. Well at the end of the trip, to the IRI’s surprise, (No, I was never an IRI) the aforesaid RM was on centreline and glidepath (though glidepath has always struck me as a singularly inappropriate name for what a helicopter is doing at the time, certainly not ‘gliding’) and so the IRI decided to let the Jolly Green Giant continue below break-off height and see what happened! Well, it did, didn’t it, the aircraft struck the ground a shrewd blow at a steady 90 knots and stuck there as the combined team of IRI and RMJGG could not work out what to do next or even who had control at this stage! Wings knew what to do, he picked up his phone with one hand and watched the aircraft with his other, because if you see the disaster you legally cannot be on the Board of Inquiry! Well, the aircraft passed the tower slowing only slightly with faint wisps of brake dust beginning to show and a fairly impressive amount of rearward cyclic, finally coming to a halt at the runway intersection. The subsequent debrief was not entirely dominated by the IRI, as is usual, Wings seemed to have an awful lot to say.
To my certain knowledge it is also the only helicopter ever to have successfully taken on a SEA HARRIER in air to air combat and won, forcing the damaged stovie to return to base unable to continue, whilst the victorious and gallant Wessex crew, of which I was the Captain, landed at a nearby inn and celebrated their historic victory. This followed a mid air collision in cloud and did result in a little cosmetic surgery required around the tail wheel area of the Wessex and a new tailfin for the Harrier. Spookily, the Air Traffic Team on watch at the time happened to be a husband and wife, one of whom was controlling me and the other Willie Macatee, a USMC exchange Pilot in the Sea Harrier. More importantly than these very important details was the fact that husband and wife had fallen out at the time of the incident!
If the Wessex 5 had a weakness it was its tendency not to start when it was really necessary. It damned well knew when you were on a VIP trip and would flatly refuse to start, but then after the chap had departed, fuming and late by car, would start as though nothing had happened! The attitude of “Command” was always to have a spare for a spare for a spare, especially at long weekends to ensure the job could be done. The dodgy starting was made worse in later years by the Engineers changing the batteries to smaller ones without telling the Operators. This certainly made going home for lunch or stopping off at a pub whilst in transit, a much more exciting business! No one to my knowledge ever got caught out by “Them”, but several Wessex have been known to fly quite long distances on one engine to a place where it could be admitted that the other would not start! It knew when things were really serious though and rarely failed on a SAR mission, or on one glorious occasion in the days of short exhaust pipes, when an aircraft in the middle of a line of 18 others on Salisbury Plain did a wet start and set fire to the grass! They all started wonderfully that day!!
When it first went out to Borneo this tendency not to start, especially when hot, meant that you did not shut down whilst pausing between tasks. However, to reduce fuel consumption and noise it was common to pull the speed selects back to about 200 rotor RPM or less (they would normally be at 230). The interesting bit came when you took off, especially if you forgot to push them back up again. The aircraft would stagger into the air, if you were lucky, down a slope, rotor blades coning like a ballet dancer’s arms whilst you struggled to get the revs back without the passengers knowing anything was amiss and of course before you struck the trees.
Radios were another interesting quirk of the early Wessex 5. It had a marvellous HF set that could receive every known commercial radio station from all round the world and the ability to talk clearly to Malta from the Culdrose local area. What it could not do, however, was to talk to Culdrose from the local area or any other Naval Air Station from any other area. Whether this was due to the Ops Wrens spending more time on their nails or perhaps the Ops Chief, than listening to deafening static for hours on end, we shall never know. To go with this marvel of technology the WESSEX 5 was fitted with a truly remarkable UHF set, the PTR 170. This was a lightweight set designed for the Whirlwind with the fantastic total of 12 crystallized channels and nothing else. The Whirlwind was lucky: the set was not ready in time, but instead of ditching it, some communicator who clearly had a vested interest in the thing, (probably future employment with the manufacturer, though anyone who would support the PTR 170 would make a doubtful employee!), kept the project alive and bolted it into the Wessex 5, presumably thinking that’s where it would do least harm. Even though 12 channels may have been adequate in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, they were understandably always the wrong 12 channels.
Now you may think that Junglies have enjoyed spending their lives flying as low as possible, but this is not so. We would have loved to join the Pingers flogging around in the clouds, idly glancing at instruments that patently lacked the correct attitudes, but we couldn’t talk to anyone. The only answer was to keep as low as possible and talk to no-one. After all, if you are lower than a delivery van, which does not have to get permission to enter the Heathrow Control Zone, why should you bother? Continental jaunts were made all the more exciting by the fact that the foreigners would not talk to us on our specially arranged frequencies, or would ask you to call approach which we did not have and then switch off on the special frequency! Back down to the delivery van flight level and pause at the airfield boundary in order to gain height to clear the barbed wire.
I had better clear up the low flying business, as the Wessex 5 spent most of its life there. To fly as low as possible is clearly still a prudent course of action, never mind the lack of radios that forced us down in the past. If anything drastic should go wrong you are much closer to that which is going to break your fall, ask anyone who has fallen off a barn roof (as indeed I have) and he will tell you “height hurts”. Teaching students to fly the Wessex 5 was another interesting pastime, as anyone who has followed the saga of modifications to the fuel computers and the plethora of pilots notes to go with them, will testify. Luckily, once again the fantastic single-engine performance made up for any lack of speed in dealing with the things and gave the instructor time to look up the correct actions as the student struggled with the wrong ones! The total lack of drama when on one engine was well demonstrated by an experienced Pongo on an exchange posting. On his final handling check at the end of his conversion course he did autos, approaches, landings and take-offs, all without noticing that the port engine had not been advanced from ‘ground idle’, where it was no good to man nor beast. On his re-scrub he did little better and was returned to the Army where his single engined flying skills would be of more use in their single engined aircraft.
Not always did the aircraft escape unscathed from these training exercises. Witness the two instructors who were practising Engine off landings by pulling the Speed Select levers (throttles) back on each other in increasingly difficult places. One pulled them at around 100 feet on climb out but the other chap wasn’t ready for it and failed to do anything, causing the rotor RPM to decay rather drastically. As the rotor RPM wound down they crashed straight ahead, having to climb out through the back of the cabin as there was a main wheel gently rotating outside one Pilots window and the ground filling the other.
The Wessex 5 has certainly seen life all round the world and it’s starring role in operations and disasters during its history are well known. Its greatest asset was that it was FUN to fly. You may not have been able to see out of it, you may even now have a bad back from its appalling seats and you may well never have seen your crewman’s face, but it was FUN. Chuck it about all you like and as long as you were smooth with your green gloved mitts, it would do almost anything and only retreating blade stall, tail rotor stall or your seat collapsing as the adjustor sprang out from the vibration, let you know that its limits were being approached!
Will the “Flying 290 Frame Crack” (Sea King Mk4) ever engender the same affection? With more radios than Currys, and bootnecks able to see if you have got the right map, I doubt it. Thirty degrees angle of bank the maximum and vibration that would shake the spots off a prostitute, pah! Fancy not being able to land with over forty degrees nose up for fear of breaking something, the Commando assault at Air Days will never be the same! We won’t see the likes of her again, more is the pity, but the venerable Wessex 5 was FUN whilst it lasted.
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Wessex
I have never had the privilege of flying in a Wessex or even handling them (as I have worked on the ramp with Helos), however I do know plenty of Pilots who have flown them, one as a Junglie and owner of many campaign medals of the Cocktail party as he proudly posts.
They all talk with fond memories about the Wessex and it’s power. “The Junglie” told me when he was instructing on them, he pulled the power on one engine and the student did not notice, he continued to fly with one engine only on land “The Junglie” said “Do you want me shut this down as you don’t seemed to want to use it?” Oh how the student must have felt like a Donkey!
Another story I was told was about how tough they were, one was in an incident in Northern Ireland, the pilot flew several trip in a badly damage machine which was immediately written off when it got back to base
My memories of the Wessex, are back when just a Boy climbing in North Wales with the “Old Man”, is watching them flying around, bright yellow and “Stan the Winch Man” giving me a wave as they passed; what a machine!
They all talk with fond memories about the Wessex and it’s power. “The Junglie” told me when he was instructing on them, he pulled the power on one engine and the student did not notice, he continued to fly with one engine only on land “The Junglie” said “Do you want me shut this down as you don’t seemed to want to use it?” Oh how the student must have felt like a Donkey!
Another story I was told was about how tough they were, one was in an incident in Northern Ireland, the pilot flew several trip in a badly damage machine which was immediately written off when it got back to base
My memories of the Wessex, are back when just a Boy climbing in North Wales with the “Old Man”, is watching them flying around, bright yellow and “Stan the Winch Man” giving me a wave as they passed; what a machine!
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There's a funny looking airplane?
Not sure if this was a 72 SHFNI thing or of wider provenance.
Does anyone recall the words of a little ditty, often sung whilst lumbering over bandit country that began something like this and was sung to the tune of Cwm Rhondda (Bread of Heaven):
There's a funny looking airplane.
Drove by funny looking men.
...
..
My favourite memories (good and bad) as a fairy on 72 were:
Belting down the fire breaks in a forest near Sennelager at 90 kts and 15 feet.
Chasing "bandit" cars around the Thetford range. I'm sure that someone whacked a main wheel onto the bonnet at 60 mph to "encourage" a stop.
First heli I ever "hovered" - or danced around a field in some sort of loose interpretation of remaining stationary over the same bit of ground.
Covering the marshalling bats in oil and lighting them to help a Walter come back down at night in fog at Aldergrove
Fantastic torque turns into a rapid arrival. Couldn't believe how you could throw those things around.
Getting a phone call from a captain who couldn't find his way through the fog, spotted some grass, popped it down for a look see and found himself on a roundabout on some road junction (most definitely third hand and may be a myth).
And my favourite memory of all at 72. Dick Poole, sooty or rigger if I recall, sitting in the crewroom. Sqdn WO walks in (forget his name) and the following conversation ensues:
"Corporal Poole. I saw you leave the squadron at 5.20 last night. You know shift end time is 5.30".
"Not me sir. Must have been someone else".
"Don't argue with me Corporal, I saw you".
"Sorry sir, you must be mistaken".
WO, visibly angry now - "Corporal Poole. I saw you with my own eyes!"
"Couldn't have been me sir. I left about ten past"
WO turns incandescent with rage and can't shout properly through the apoplexy, rest of crew room howling in laughter...
Anyone who has to ask "why so special" probably had to be there. Looked right, smelt right, sounded right and from what I hear, flew right.
Fond memories.
Does anyone recall the words of a little ditty, often sung whilst lumbering over bandit country that began something like this and was sung to the tune of Cwm Rhondda (Bread of Heaven):
There's a funny looking airplane.
Drove by funny looking men.
...
..
My favourite memories (good and bad) as a fairy on 72 were:
Belting down the fire breaks in a forest near Sennelager at 90 kts and 15 feet.
Chasing "bandit" cars around the Thetford range. I'm sure that someone whacked a main wheel onto the bonnet at 60 mph to "encourage" a stop.
First heli I ever "hovered" - or danced around a field in some sort of loose interpretation of remaining stationary over the same bit of ground.
Covering the marshalling bats in oil and lighting them to help a Walter come back down at night in fog at Aldergrove
Fantastic torque turns into a rapid arrival. Couldn't believe how you could throw those things around.
Getting a phone call from a captain who couldn't find his way through the fog, spotted some grass, popped it down for a look see and found himself on a roundabout on some road junction (most definitely third hand and may be a myth).
And my favourite memory of all at 72. Dick Poole, sooty or rigger if I recall, sitting in the crewroom. Sqdn WO walks in (forget his name) and the following conversation ensues:
"Corporal Poole. I saw you leave the squadron at 5.20 last night. You know shift end time is 5.30".
"Not me sir. Must have been someone else".
"Don't argue with me Corporal, I saw you".
"Sorry sir, you must be mistaken".
WO, visibly angry now - "Corporal Poole. I saw you with my own eyes!"
"Couldn't have been me sir. I left about ten past"
WO turns incandescent with rage and can't shout properly through the apoplexy, rest of crew room howling in laughter...
Anyone who has to ask "why so special" probably had to be there. Looked right, smelt right, sounded right and from what I hear, flew right.
Fond memories.
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G,day from Australia,
I just found the comments on the Wessex crash on the Rusty B. As I was the crewman flying with Dave Dixon. The description of the incident is basically correct. However, I just want to clarify a couple of points; the crash took place on 17 May 1969 and we were carrying a trailor underslung at the time. I believe the unfortunate member of the stores party that was killed on deck was a young Welshman.
Vic Warrington
Additional information:
We have the following entry for XT774: 845 Sqn ('F/B'), whilst landing underslung trailer on deck, lost power, heavy landing, entered ground resonance, port undercarriage collapsed, a/c rolled onto port side, A/B AB Hughes killed by debris and A/B W Willis injured, Bulwark off Cyprus, Cat HY 17.5.69 (S/L DP Dixon and PO VS Warrington).
I just found the comments on the Wessex crash on the Rusty B. As I was the crewman flying with Dave Dixon. The description of the incident is basically correct. However, I just want to clarify a couple of points; the crash took place on 17 May 1969 and we were carrying a trailor underslung at the time. I believe the unfortunate member of the stores party that was killed on deck was a young Welshman.
Vic Warrington
Additional information:
We have the following entry for XT774: 845 Sqn ('F/B'), whilst landing underslung trailer on deck, lost power, heavy landing, entered ground resonance, port undercarriage collapsed, a/c rolled onto port side, A/B AB Hughes killed by debris and A/B W Willis injured, Bulwark off Cyprus, Cat HY 17.5.69 (S/L DP Dixon and PO VS Warrington).
Last edited by VicW; 30th Jan 2010 at 23:47. Reason: Wrong Date/More information
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westland wessex. need help!!
Hi guys, can anyone please help with a set of scale drawings to the wessex, i have a copy of the +4 drawings but not sure of how accurate these are. Why i ask is that i have scratch built a rc. westland wessex has1 and wish to build a 1/6 scale wessex and need to make sure that the drawings i use are to scale.Any help will be much appreciated. cheers gav..
YouTube - westland wessex has 1
ps.this is a link to my 1/10 scale wessex in flight.
YouTube - westland wessex has 1
ps.this is a link to my 1/10 scale wessex in flight.
flying amongst the undergrowth and trimming the trees to get out would have been more realistic!
what a wierd feeling seeing a 'wessex' flying again
what a wierd feeling seeing a 'wessex' flying again
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72
Great Gen, been looking for that 72 stuff for ages. did 8 yrs in 70s & 80s. have a mate who was with me and his son is now on 72 course with 8 weeks to go. Albums had some cracking pics in them, will follow up, thanks. any other info would be welcome. (4000 hrs in a walter, never got hurt)
"Mildly" Eccentric Stardriver
Just stumbled on this thread and haven't read all the posts yet. Why do people love the Wessex? Because it "did what it says on the tin". I flew the Mk 2 back in the sixties with 78 and 72 Squadrons RAF, desert, jungle, Europe. A genuine, honest machine with no vices (as long as you respected the old girl), and a proper engine-out capability. Advanced (for the time) engine controls and a good autopilot. Auto-stabilisation, but in "feel-free" mode supremely manoeuvrable. Won't hear a bad word said against it.
Herod, I dearly loved the beast at the time - it was the type I flew on my first 2 Sqns then taught on at Strawbury - but no vices? Shome mishtake shurely - think ground resonance (only a/c I've flown where you had to set torque against the rotor brake to stop it shaking itself to bits on start-up), autorotations with hyd-out, massive I-beams instead of window frames, a DECCA box which neatly filled the space between those I-beams and a cockpit which absolutely guaranteed a dodgy back at some stage in your career. Remember the drill for double-gen failure at night? Even the Series 3 Whirlwind had a better system for selecting essential electrics than the Wessie 2/5 - wipe your hand twice down the roof-panel: once to make the switches and once to make sure.
Still great fun though.
Still great fun though.
"Mildly" Eccentric Stardriver
Thud and Blunder, I said "no vices (as long as you respected the old girl). Yes, it had its faults, you show me an aircraft that hasn't, but for the time it was a fine machine. Hot day, max weight, 105 howitzer slung under, one engine out, and still able to come to the hover and gently put the gun down before landing alongside. It's forty years (ye gods!) since I last flew rotary, so I'm not au fait with the state of the art, being more of a fixed-wing person until retirement. I guess things have moved on. As you say, t'was good fun.
I think the great thing about the Wessex is that it has ceased to exist (to quote from the dead parrot sketch) - I much prefered the Puma (head down waiting for incoming).
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All Mks
As another who has stumbled into this thread, it has been a cracking read , especially for one of two overconfident Junglie sprogs who, in mid '72, were catapulted into three successive Wessex tours: Mk5 with 845 Sqdn, Mk1 in 771/772 Sqdn and then Mk3 in ships' flights. If you then think that the FAA had paid off all variants by the mid 80s, please accept dimming memories which have probably turned 'faults' into 'features'.
The warmest feeling arises from what we could do with the beast, at the time. While much has already been covered, I must say that the Mk5 was a joy in cold mountains, providing you could see the rocks. Bast0n's wheel on a pinnacle experience was not uncommon. Fitting a 'parrot's beak' intake in '73 with revised anti-icing and a better thermometer allowed us to fly down to -9 celcius (indicated) in the snow around Bardufoss, until they realised that the Gnome's new whistling noise from its 'hoover' warranted a replacement ecu. 5 engine changes later, the intake was removed. Strafing with 2" RP was another wonderful experience for many, not just for the concrete sailor's rockets around the Cyprus range.
The constant challenge was how to best achieve a Company Lift in a single sortie, by day and night. Less glowing is a recall of night stream formation without NVG. With practice and regular turns to even out the spacing, the stream interval could be reduced to 30 seconds between 8 aircraft in line astern. On one dark night, a formation landed in the order Ldr-2-3-4-6-5-7-8 without 5 and 6 knowing where they had crossed. I can also vouch for the sorry state of the radio fit and some of the regretable scrapes we got into just trying to fly around the UK, dodging cloud, poor visibility and the ground.
The move to the Mk1 brought multi-dial UHF and VHF radios, twice as many exhaust pipes for one less engine and Night SAR. There must be some out there who remember 'Engage - Wind me down'. Into wind at 125', the co-pilot engaged the FCS and then had to turn the height pot to maintain a lead at about 20 feet lower than the Rad Alt indication. A swaying 40' hover above a flickering floating flare could induce sweaty gloves. There were also some odd moments. Suddenly realising that the ground crew had gone during a grumbling AVPIN start did not induce confidence, especially when the obvious way out was past the Koffman starter that might be part of a fire (it wasn't on this occasion). Lu Zuckerman was right and hindsight notes that a full double-skinned AVPIN tin was relatively safe on a land-away until it was part-used, taking in more air. We never really knew how big the bang could be if the crewman had kicked it out and it landed hard.
The Mk3 with its outstanding duplex FCS (Mk30?), Flight Director, accurate instrumentation and a circuit height raised by 25' to 150' bought precision, confidence and a much better class of run ashore: Destroyers went to more interesting places than Carriers. However, a closer relationship with the Bucket of Sunshine gave hours of reading out loud for very little flying.
In all, each version had its features and idiosyncrasies and I would not have missed any of it. They did have one thing in common that does not seem to have been mentioned and I do not miss. The seat posture was rubbish!
The warmest feeling arises from what we could do with the beast, at the time. While much has already been covered, I must say that the Mk5 was a joy in cold mountains, providing you could see the rocks. Bast0n's wheel on a pinnacle experience was not uncommon. Fitting a 'parrot's beak' intake in '73 with revised anti-icing and a better thermometer allowed us to fly down to -9 celcius (indicated) in the snow around Bardufoss, until they realised that the Gnome's new whistling noise from its 'hoover' warranted a replacement ecu. 5 engine changes later, the intake was removed. Strafing with 2" RP was another wonderful experience for many, not just for the concrete sailor's rockets around the Cyprus range.
The constant challenge was how to best achieve a Company Lift in a single sortie, by day and night. Less glowing is a recall of night stream formation without NVG. With practice and regular turns to even out the spacing, the stream interval could be reduced to 30 seconds between 8 aircraft in line astern. On one dark night, a formation landed in the order Ldr-2-3-4-6-5-7-8 without 5 and 6 knowing where they had crossed. I can also vouch for the sorry state of the radio fit and some of the regretable scrapes we got into just trying to fly around the UK, dodging cloud, poor visibility and the ground.
The move to the Mk1 brought multi-dial UHF and VHF radios, twice as many exhaust pipes for one less engine and Night SAR. There must be some out there who remember 'Engage - Wind me down'. Into wind at 125', the co-pilot engaged the FCS and then had to turn the height pot to maintain a lead at about 20 feet lower than the Rad Alt indication. A swaying 40' hover above a flickering floating flare could induce sweaty gloves. There were also some odd moments. Suddenly realising that the ground crew had gone during a grumbling AVPIN start did not induce confidence, especially when the obvious way out was past the Koffman starter that might be part of a fire (it wasn't on this occasion). Lu Zuckerman was right and hindsight notes that a full double-skinned AVPIN tin was relatively safe on a land-away until it was part-used, taking in more air. We never really knew how big the bang could be if the crewman had kicked it out and it landed hard.
The Mk3 with its outstanding duplex FCS (Mk30?), Flight Director, accurate instrumentation and a circuit height raised by 25' to 150' bought precision, confidence and a much better class of run ashore: Destroyers went to more interesting places than Carriers. However, a closer relationship with the Bucket of Sunshine gave hours of reading out loud for very little flying.
In all, each version had its features and idiosyncrasies and I would not have missed any of it. They did have one thing in common that does not seem to have been mentioned and I do not miss. The seat posture was rubbish!
Last edited by Data-Lynx; 16th Mar 2010 at 17:16. Reason: Spell thingy
Ah! The Wessex 'hunch' which led to lower back pain which never officially existed according to those with a pen!
Never mentioned because Thread has the phrase.....'fond memories'.....in the title:-)
Never mentioned because Thread has the phrase.....'fond memories'.....in the title:-)
