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?