Airspeed Oxford documents

[MiTasol]

The NACA report possibly refers to one of the non RAF aircraft that had the two pitch prop control added to the left of the gear handle as per the attached. I have not read the NACA file yet because I have been trying to find a copy of the manual in a library somewhere. If you know of one somewhere please PM me as I need a couple of pages scanned - not sure how many yet but at least one page is missing from both the photocopy and the crappy pdf. Another is missing and crap in the pdf.

As far as I know all the RAF/RAAF/RNZAF Oxfords had fixed pitch props. Never seen a photo of a Canadian Pratt powered one so no idea on that version.

 

[nuuumannn]

As far as I know all the RAF/RAAF/RNZAF Oxfords had fixed pitch props. Never seen a photo of a Canadian Pratt powered one so no idea on that version.

Taking a look through the books, on the whole, they didn't have vp props, but 190 Mk.Vs were built and had C/S Ham Std props and were powered by Wasp Jrs, all but two of which went to Canada. A single Mk.III was built, P1864, which was fitted with Rotol C/S props, but it was the only one. It first flew in 1940.

I inadvertently missed the reference to VP props when reading the paperwork, but having looked back at this document there are a few answers. The date points to evaluation at the very beginning of the Oxford story and a few things are worthy of mention. The Oxford first flew on 19 June 1937, the paper is dated September 1937 and the first production aircraft were not accepted into the RAF until November 1937. The first Oxfords to go overseas were delivered to New Zealand in 1938. This means the NACA people who prepared the paper went to the UK to do so.

Regarding the vp props issue, in describing the Cheetah engines it states that "The chief difference is provision for a variable-pitch propeller", but we find the following in a later statement "at present there is a hold-up in delivery of variable pitch propellers and fixed-pitch propellers are being used. Constant-speed D.H. propellers are the ultimate aim". This obviously never took place as Ham Std props were applied to the Mk.Vs that went to Canada and the rest were built with fixed pitch props.

 

[MiTasol]

While I wait for replies from a couple of potential sources of the dud pages I will update the Oxford Orders and Oxford Instructions so that the contents pages show all the documents in the file.

And then I will scan some Lockheed manuals - UK Lockheed (hydraulics) for the Oxford not US Lockheed.

I do not know how many of these I actually have.

 

[MiTasol]

Well I blew that.

The Oxford Instructions Contents page has had the extra documents listed but somehow I failed to save the Oxford Orders correction so will have to start again. !@#$%^ Time to take a rest I think.

Even worse my partial copy of AP 1803 Aeroplane hydraulic equipment is missing the sections on Lockheed hydraulics.

 

[MiTasol]

Was down in Brisbane last week and visited a friend who has a good library. Unfortunately he did not have a copy of the Oxford Maintenance manual so I will have to post my incomplete copy. Will try an NZ source first tho

I did bring back a number of Oxford documents tho and this is the first. It was pretty "dirty" because all the pages were on that horrible wartime brown paper. I have done some cleanup but it is not as good as I would like. I need to scan over a dozen manuals (some very large) before I have to take this lot back in 3 weeks so I cant spend more time on it.

Next up RAF pilot notes

 

[MiTasol]

Pilot notes - OCR'd

 

[MiTasol]

Well so far I cannot find another example to get the missing pages from and I have tried sources in Aus, Canada, Italy, NZ, Sth Africa, UK, US and even Zambia. I have not tried the US library of Congress but a recent email suggests I try there. Not urgent though as I cannot see why they would have one. I would also accept pages from the HMSO version of the manual because usually they are virtually identical apart from the front cover and title page

As mentioned in post 1 pages are missing and some of the diagrams are still pretty ordinary after serious dewarping. Despite this it has come up reasonably I think. The cover started life as an Anson cover, all the orange and text removed and then the scanned photocopy text inserted and white changed to orange again.

 

[watson1963]

Really appreciate the Oxford manuals MiTasol - I have visited several FTS or FIS Oxford crash sites in Scotland, so the tech books are a great help in understanding what the aeroplane looked like before it was reduced to Cat E!