buttries at Longside
 

and being shat on by the pigeons ! still ,good project and great fun with a great bunch of guys!:

I'm still showing the signs round my middle of all the Ellon Bakery Butteries that we ate during that time at Longside.

Davey, have you any electronic copies of the photos of NAAB, I can't remember seeing them at the time.

The photos here may bring back happy/sad memories to some on this forum.

http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/s...981resized.jpg

http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/s...1981resize.jpg

Location - Borgland Dolphin, Fulmar Oil Field
Time - Winter 1980/81



http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/s.../tiresized.jpg

Location Blackpool Airport
Time - Summer 1982

Apologies for quality of the pictures, but they are scans of very old photos.

G -NAAB Birth
 

HI Matey !

Yes I have the album , which I am getting converted to digital format, then I will post the " birth " of BO105C to BO105DBS on here .

Nice pics, memories of the Borgland Dolphin Fulmar project !

Hi Folks here with attached pics of the stretch project for G-NAAB ship 416
 

cheers for those davey, I believe I met you when Irish Helicopters drafted in your expertise to help them sort out their bolkow EI-BLD when it had a hard landing some few years back and you had the album with you in the hangar?

Hi 'bolkow' - who are you ? I wish I could remember your actual name, I had a good old time at Irish lol and they treated me well

Great album Davey, it took me back abit too. My logbook shows I was doing groundruns on that machine on 30/31 March 99. And I recall that was when the Eurocopter chap came to do the inspection for it's approval.:8

yes. indeed, that was nerve wracking for us all at the time LOL ( and who are you again - my memory is terrible !!!!)

must have a look through some of my pics, got some dating back to the late 70's, though, unfortuneately, none when the first two were at Bourn having HF fitted. I will see if I can find them.

Cheers Davie, good pics and great memories, no better way of learning the Bolkow!

Great photos,

I watched a similar major rebuild at Bourn without the aid of a jig!!!!!!!

When we tried to fit the main gearbox the ring of bolts at the bottom was half a hole out.

Then we tried putting the ring of bolts in first. The only way to get the A frames aligned was to put all the shims in the front on one side and all in the back on the other.

A lack of clearance between the fwd tail rotor driveshaft and the centre firewall was ignored and a brand new shaft was written off when it contacted the said firewall.

Then they built a jig!!!

BO 105s moving to South Georgia
 

I've been following the various stories about Bond BO 105s in their various guises with great interest. Amazing aircraft. It now looks likely that 2 of them will soon start yet another career down on the island of South Georgia, working on a conservation project. An engineer will be needed to look after these aircraft in the period Feb-Apr 2011. Does anyone know of someone who might be interested in a couple of months doing something a bit different? I'm contactable at [email protected]

BOND Bo105s
 

I don't suppose that you wish to divulge which 2 will be travelling south? And who the Operator will be?

Whichever they are, they'll stand you in good stead but I think you will need more than 1 Engineer. They're not THAT reliable.

Enjoy the trip.

Sq:ok:

Both have been well used and lovingly looked after......they will still be a handful for 1 engineer though.

105 s in South Georgia
 

Hi Tony,

I would be interested in the South Georgia trip ! for sure

regards

Davey

2 are for sale on the Eurocopter site... perhaps it's those?

Two for sale on Eurocopter site
 

These 2 helicopters are indeed ex Bond aircraft :

Ship No. 416 - which is discussed in this thread is G-NAAB and is the ex-Dorset & Somerset Air Ambulance.

Ship No. 0855 is G-BTHV - quite a new aircraft by Bond standards.

Mr David Bond (the old Man) bought the first one in 1973 - G-AZOR S/No. 20 but now registered as G-WAAN,:ok: which is still flying. Says a lot for the durability of the Bo 105. I cut my teeth on them in civil aviation, they were certainly a character builder !!

Can you get the time off Davey? It would be a good experience.

BTHV, brilliant machine.

105's
 

Great thread guy's! Bought back a whole load of happy memories amassed from nearly 4000 hrs with these fabulous aircraft.:) Think I got most of them in my logbook (in one guise or another!) including the much missed 'Mike Fox'.

Got to agree with the plaudits for the Bond / BAS engineers that kept the old gilrs going. Always did a terrific job mostly in cr*p conditions and I always felt like the machine would do her bit if I did mine.

Couple of things spring to mind :- We had 2 oddballs. TVAM (ex Thames Valley Air ambulance) - no SAS, and the already mentioned BTHV which, if memory serves was the only one in the fleet with Bendix FCU's (?).

Another thought! Didn't BAS get 2 'CBS's' from Mexico (or somewhere vaguely latin -american) that were converted to DBS-4's? Or was it just another of my weird dreams?

Very sad day when the 105's finally bow out. A real pilot's machine, leaked like a sieve, rattled like hell, but OH! what fun! :ok::ok::ok:



P.S. Good to hear your still going Davey - hope you're well.

indeed a great thread, little did I expect such a shared interest would be sparked, and the pics are like goldust for me to view, great inputs from all concerns. Davey, did you get the pics of the graupner bolkow model of BLD Irish Helicopters that I sent?

...and NAAB, come on Bobby, you must have flown that one too!

They were both on lease from EC.

Good to see you today, by the way. Will make it a longer visit next time.

More Bond Bo105 photos
 

Just a few of my photos of G-NAAA.

http://i329.photobucket.com/albums/l...01/Mn0885a.jpg

North West Air Ambulance taking off, after attending very serious RTA near Rochdale. November 2000.

http://i329.photobucket.com/albums/l...01/Mn0996b.jpg

NWAA near Rawtenstall, December 2000

http://i329.photobucket.com/albums/l...AAArrows02.jpg

NWAA at Blackpool Airport with some 'friends'. Summer 2000

Somebody out there has a photo of the Ninian (I think) Bo105 being torn apart by an unexpected storm, 120-140kts rings a bell.

TeeS

Ninian January 1992
 

TeeS,

No doubt you are thinking of the time G-BAMF was caught on Ninian North overnight with the un-forecast 130+ kts! One blade snapped off completely with another broken and dangling. I flew G-AZTI up to through Unst and Sullom Voe on 3 Jan to replace it. The islands had also taken a beating, with the RAF 'golf balls' of Saxa Vord being, quite literally, blown away. Also, the 'famous' Hagdale Lodge was ripped to bits, as was a portacabin at the side of the runway at Unst International.

Unfortunately, I don't think anyone took any photos. Unless Davy Gow took some, as he was the engineer on at the time. But it will live in the memory for a long time!!!

bondu

Ninian January 1992
 

Yes I remember that ! how could one forget!, you should have seen Micky Pages face when I took him up to the Heli-deck to explain why the shuttle had to be cancelled !! LOL.
There were pics taken, all a bit shakey for obvious reasons, they were handed over to Tony Cox for the insurance company!
Any way , we got the old girl going again after fitting new head and blades/A- frames, alighnment checks etc etc, then we flew her back to Longside!:

Hi Bondu, so thats what davey meant by it being the best place he ever experienced a BJ, and I never realised he was talking weather! LOL

Discuss............

http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/j...hTC3Bucket.jpg

I've got a million of 'em

I am very interested in the identity of that bolkow, as far as I am aware Irish Helicopters have been the only operators to have had that type of radome fitted to a bo105?

It was a temporary fit on (I think) G-AZTI for a contract putting Pilots on to tankers approaching Sullom Voe. The screen was on a removable pedestal fitted in front of the co-pilot's seat.
The underslung load is a TC3 pollution dispersal bucket.
Happy days

Interesting, I had never seen one on any other bo105D apart from the aforementioned.

Radome
 

The aircraft in the picture is actually G-BAMF , taken by myself as I was doing the marshaling for the TC3 bucket training. MF spent most of her days after Ninian ,up at Sullom- Voe. she was actually the second aircraft to be fitted with the Radar mod , the first one I belive was G-AZTI but she was swopped with MF for operational reasons, very early on in the contract.

G-AZTI..
 

I have literally hover taxied that bitch into City hospital Truro on to a postage stamp of a helipad with a critical on board in typical Cornish weather.. :eek:

Over to you Geoffers...:ok:

Hi Davey, what interested me about the radome on the nose was that all three Irish Helicopters bolkows had them, EI-AWB = G-AZOM,
EI-BDI and in the earlier days of her time with that company EI-BLD. Until I saw these pics I was never aware opf any other BO105d having had that fitting.

How about this one then.................

[IMG]http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/j...tsMilitary.jpg[/IMG]

Radar fit.
 

If memory serves, Bond had 2 sets of radar mounts for the radar, so that the kit could be swapped quickly during aircraft swaps.
One set was on 'MF' and the other was on 'FD'. The kit on 'FD' may have gone with it to South Africa.

Does anyone know what 'FD' is doing now?

what was FD's full registration number, let me know and I can find out.

BTW, what is the identity of the bolkow ojn the navy boat above? The door crast suggests Trinity House or Northern Lighthouse Board, but I cant see much when I enlarge the pic

It registration looks like G-DCCH which was a Devon Air Ambulance before being written off in 2001.

BB: It's not the one which which slid of the boat by any chance?

The boat that rocked..... and off went the Bolkow G-THLS. :{

Foxy Dog
 

FD's reg was/is G-BAFD