Recent content by LCharnes

Thanks for the link! I may not find answers in this archive to this question, but I'll probably find answers to questions I have yet to think about. This appears to have most of the back issues from 1912 through 1938. I hope 1939 is around somewhere.

Getting closer. There's also an accompanying "Brooklands Gazetter" from Oct 2017 at https://www.elmbridge.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2023-04/Brooklands%20Gazetter_0.pdf. It has a smidgen more information and the text isn't as dorked up as it is in the conservation plan. The conservation plan...

I'll certainly take this! My heroine's already passed through Croydon a couple of times, but I've kept her out of the terminal because I didn't have any information about how it was laid out. Thanks! Here's a description of The King's Cup from the Art Deco Society UK. Apparently, there was room...

The AA Register supposedly covered every active airfield in Britain, including the well-established ones. While I was able to get copies of the AA flight charts at the RAF Museum archives, they didn't have any AA Registers, nor did the NAL, so I can't confirm this. Some excerpts shown on the...

I bought Flying Start: Flying Schools and Clubs at Brooklands, 1910-1939 when I visited Brooklands last year. (It was on sale.) Even though there's a stylized rendering of the Aero Clubhouse on every bloody page, the only thing the book has to say about the clubhouse itself is, "On 28 May 1932...

That's the Racing Club's clubhouse, up at the north end of the Brooklands compound. The one I'm concerned with is the Aero Clubhouse down on the southwest end (next to TK Maxx if you're on Google Maps -- look for "The Signature Store.") I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of what you...

With the traffic in and out of Brooklands airfield, I'd expect something more like a tea or snack bar, open diner hours. Perhaps pub food without the pub, so it wouldn't have to be licensed. It seems to me that a place that served only high tea wouldn't be open long enough to make the rent...

Actually, if anyone knows whether the flying clubhouse (photo attached) included a cafe, I'd love to know about it. Not even the present owner knows.

For reasons too convoluted to recount, I'm trying to find out what the landing and basing fee structures were at Brooklands and Croyden in the late 1930s. Yes, I know I can send a request (and money) to Brooklands' archives, but they take forever. (My last query was finally answered after three...

Aha! So that's what that is. I have the B/W photo and couldn't tell what that lever was for. Thanks so much for deciphering it!

Did that. I have an otherwise good video of a check flight for Iolar, the Irish DH.84. The problem is, it's shot from the cockpit door to the pilot's right, and it's impossible to see what he's doing to his left, where I suspect the hand brake lever is. The rest of the Dragon videos I've found...

Yeah, you found what I found. I've got the DH.89 Pilot's Notes as well as another cockpit schematic that shows a different-looking control in roughly the same place. Neither correspond to anything I've found in the DH.84 so far. Thanks.

I sent a message to the De Havilland Heritage Office and am waiting for a reply. When I was last in England, I tried to see the DH.84 at the Science Museum in Wiltshire, but it was all in pieces in their restoration facility. The one at the National Museum of Flight in Scotland has no interior...

Thanks.

Back again, working on the next book. I have a very obscure question: did the DH.84 have a parking brake? If so, how was it controlled? If not, how were the main brakes controlled? Would it be possible to jam something against the lever/pedal/whatever to keep the brakes engaged while the pilot...