The Barracuda Project

[Mike Bull]

That's already very old news- that attempt to resurrect the Barra died out yonks ago, so no concerns there.

[Renegadenemo]

Just a quick update - the guys at FAAM now have a folder of reference stuff dug out by their volunteers and a pallet of squashed elevators for us so we ought to have a bit of broken Barra' on site in the near future.

[Renegadenemo]

Got our box of Barra' this morning. A buffet of squashed and broken elevators. We've laid one out on the bench to see how it goes together. Not much to it really... A big steel tube tube through the middle with bits of aluminium hung on the outside. Sound familiar?
The plan is we'll give it to anyone who's between jobs. The rivet twins, for example, are waiting for the cockpit skins to come back from BettaBlast but they're as good at removing rivets as putting them back so it'll be good practice. Likewise, we all end up with a little spare time here and there so it's something to practice new skills and processes on where there's little to lose - something that almost never happens on K7. We have four Barra' elevators and one K7. It'll be fun.

[Mike Bull]

It was amazing how quickly you can go from looking at a pile of twisted crap, feeling daunted, to thinking 'right, this bit will come off of here, that will blast clean, that will straighten', etc...

There's still bound to be some sourpuss somewhere who'll criticise us for overlapping projects but heck, it's only a pair of elevators- we've hardly got a whole torpedo bomber parked next to Bluebird!

Good times, and a privilege to be trusted with the parts.

[Andrew453]

It was amazing how quickly you can go from looking at a pile of twisted crap, feeling daunted, to thinking 'right, this bit will come off of here, that will blast clean, that will straighten', etc...

There's still bound to be some sourpuss somewhere who'll criticise us for overlapping projects but heck, it's only a pair of elevators- we've hardly got a whole torpedo bomber parked next to Bluebird!

Good times, and a privilege to be trusted with the parts.

Just as long as you don't get the two mixed up...a Barracuda with an Orph, now there's an idea!

[klingon]

AAAAGH!-they were pretty ropey with a type 32 Merlin never mind a jet engine!-that combination would take the title of flying coffin away from the Lockheed Starfighter!

[Renegadenemo]

that combination would take the title of flying coffin away from the Lockheed Starfighter!

I always thought that was really unfair... it seems the only reason the F104 got a bad name is because the Germans bought some the day after they parked up their ME109s and had a bit of trouble making them work properly. It was just another plane once they sussed it. One of my diving mates flew 'em for years for the Italian air force without a care.

Mind you, we will have to be careful about mixing up bits of Barra' and K7. It's difficult to spot the difference between LOOF and BOOB!

[quicksilver-wsr]

that combination would take the title of flying coffin away from the Lockheed Starfighter!

I always thought that was really unfair... it seems the only reason the F104 got a bad name is because the Germans bought some the day after they parked up their ME109s and had a bit of trouble making them work properly. It was just another plane once they sussed it. One of my diving mates flew 'em for years for the Italian air force without a care.

Bill is right. Its terrible reputation was not really deserved. I have a bit of "history" with the Starfighter, in one way and another, dating back to the late 1960s, and in 1988 I was fortunate enough to do a high-performance sortie in one of the two-seaters with a NASA test pilot.

The West Germans made a huge leap from the old Sabre to the F-104 and their training methods didn't sufficiently bridge the gap. There tended to be a high Ioss-rate with all high-performance jet aircraft in those days - of every type - but with the German '104s the attrition rate went through the roof. So then the Americans set up a proper training regimen, Stateside, to which the Germans sent their pilots, and then their loss-rate dropped dramatically and was more on a par with other, comparable aircraft.

But, then, what other aircraft is really comparable with the F-104? They were hairy! Only two other airborne craft had a higher landing speed: the Space Shuttle Orbiter and the North American X-15. Take-off was also a bit of a worry with the '104, because an engine failure on take-off meant that you had to eject ... no option ... because with such a short wingspan, there was no chance of landing-on again without rolling the aircraft up into a little metal ball.

The short wingspan made for an impressive rate of roll, though - 400 degrees per second, if memory serves me right.

Mike, if anyone has a go at you guys for overlapping two restoration projects, they don't know their ASI from their elevator. It's quite normal to do that, to keep everybody occupied, keep the workshop on a roll, and make the best use of time when people are held-up on one of the projects. I remember in Scotland years ago, a chap restoring a Hurricane, a Lysander, a Fairey Battle and other rare-birds. His engineers, who were full-timers, were switched back and forward from one aircraft to another as progress on each restoration allowed - the main hold-up, of course, being sourcing spare parts.

[Andrew453]

Mike, if anyone has a go at you guys for overlapping two restoration projects, they don't know their ASI from their elevator. It's quite normal to do that, to keep everybody occupied, keep the workshop on a roll, and make the best use of time when people are held-up on one of the projects. I remember in Scotland years ago, a chap restoring a Hurricane, a Lysander, a Fairey Battle and other rare-birds. His engineers, who were full-timers, were switched back and forward from one aircraft to another as progress on each restoration allowed - the main hold-up, of course, being sourcing spare parts.

[/quote]
That would have been the Strathallan Collection, Nigel. I had a close look over that Hurricane back in the day, and the Strathallan boys had made a first class job of it. I seem to recall being told that it was a real dog when they got it after the Battle of Britain movie. Just a shame that it had to be sold off with the rest of the collection, as it was destroyed in a hangar fire in Canada.

[quicksilver-wsr]

That would have been the Strathallan Collection, Nigel. I had a close look over that Hurricane back in the day, and the Strathallan boys had made a first class job of it. I seem to recall being told that it was a real dog when they got it after the Battle of Britain movie. Just a shame that it had to be sold off with the rest of the collection, as it was destroyed in a hangar fire in Canada.

Yes, that's right, Andrew: the Strathallan Collection, owned by Sir William Roberts - or Willie Roberts, as we knew him - a lovely, lovely man that used to happily put up with my incessant phone calls to his home, Strathallan Castle, when I was a teenager aching to learn everything I could about this amazing collection of warbirds that had suddenly blossomed into being in deepest Perthshire in the early 1970s.

In those days, restoring an aircraft of the likes of a Lysander to airworthy condition was simply unheard-of ... especially in Auchterader!

Willie also owned an airworthy Texan (Harvard), which he kindly loaned to me, complete with pilot - Boeing 747 jockey Chris Bevan - for an air-display team I formed in 1973.

I never did get to any of the Strathallan air displays, which I believe were excellent. By the time they started, I'd reverted to being a Sassenach and rarely got back north of the border.

Wonderful days, long-gone, alas. We are a bit spoilt for choice now, as people can even retrieve warbirds from 50 years' entombment in glaciers and put them back into the air. Which is a great achievement, of course. But in the days of the Strathallan Collection, aircraft like the ones Willie Roberts owned really did seem like ghosts that had mysteriously materialised out of the ether, and that's how I remember them.