Duxford....Birds in Theirs Nests

Wayne Little · Sep 30, 2015

Excellent

Airframes · Sep 30, 2015

Good ones Jeff.

Crimea_River · Sep 30, 2015

Yep. BTW, I didn't tell you guys but, when I went off on my own to track down info for my Hurricane paint scheme info, I was led over the trip wire and stood beside the Beaufighter for a good 20 minutes while my contact was talking on his phone. I didn't snap any pics because I didn't want to be rude and take advantage of the guy's being indisposed since he was being very helpful.

Mea Culpa.

buffnut453 · Sep 30, 2015

Airframes said:
Here are the pics of the wing leading edge of the BAC Strikemaster, referred to earlier. As can be seen, it's quite rough, rather like an exaggerated anti-slip coating.
Good to have a rational explanation, as it was Jeff who noticed it, and asked me my opinion - for what it was worth !

Moving the throttle on the old JP3 was equated to "constant speed variable noise". Wonder if the rough wing leading edge on the JP5/Strikemaster was actually a cunning attempt to recreate the illustrious performance of its predecessor?

I know...coat time again!

Airframes · Sep 30, 2015

So did all RAF JP5s have this rough leading edge ?
I'd never seen it, or at least never noticed it before, and those few pics I have of JP5s don't appear to show it.

fubar57 · Sep 30, 2015

Nice photos Jeff.

Geo

Jeff Hunt · Sep 30, 2015

Cheers,

Jeff

rochie · Sep 30, 2015

Airframes · Sep 30, 2015

Nice ones Jeff.

Gnomey · Sep 30, 2015

Good shots Jeff!

buffnut453 · Sep 30, 2015

Airframes said:
So did all RAF JP5s have this rough leading edge ?
I'd never seen it, or at least never noticed it before, and those few pics I have of JP5s don't appear to show it.

"At first it was forecast that the T.5 would take the place of the T.4 on certain roles such as high altitude training. Unfortunately the majority of T.4s had to be taken out of RAF service much earlier than anticipated so the T.5 had to take on more responsibilities.
As a result, the RAF decided to update its fleet of Jet Provosts with new avionics suites, spin strakes, and roughened leading wing edges in 1973."

Taken from this website.

T Bolt · Sep 30, 2015

Great pictures Jeff

Jeff Hunt · Sep 30, 2015

Thanks for all the positive comments fellas.

How cool would it be for the IWM to empty one hanger per weekend between shows so these caged birds could sit in the sun and be photographed. I know it would be a lot of work but charge a couple of extra pounds to cover costs and let the photogs have at it!

Cheers,

Jeff

Airframes · Sep 30, 2015

Thanks for the info and link, Buff - very useful. Just looking at the photos in that web-site, some JPs seem to have the roughened leading edges (coloured grey) and some don't. I'll need to do some careful research before building my model !

That would be great Jeff - maybe we should suggest it, as a special 'Photo Shoot' event.
They do sometimes drag out the odd airframe, but it seems to be mainly when they're either moving things round, or for special events. For example, some years ago, when an American and a French B-17 visited for an airshow, the B-17G 'Mary Alice' was brought out and lined up with the two visitors, and resident 'Sally B'.
'Mary Alice' is the one we saw in 'Air Space', being cleaned and re-painted (shown below), and is normally resident in the American Museum.

gumbyk · Sep 30, 2015

buffnut453 said:
"At first it was forecast that the T.5 would take the place of the T.4 on certain roles such as high altitude training. Unfortunately the majority of T.4s had to be taken out of RAF service much earlier than anticipated so the T.5 had to take on more responsibilities.
As a result, the RAF decided to update its fleet of Jet Provosts with new avionics suites, spin strakes, and roughened leading wing edges in 1973."

Taken from this website.

From what I understand, the rough leading edges were added after it was discovered that the tip tanks altered the stall behaviour.

Vic Balshaw · Oct 1, 2015

Crimea_River said:
Good stuff. maybe someone here knows why that Strikemaster had that rough coating on the wing leading edges.

Airframes said:
Here are the pics of the wing leading edge of the BAC Strikemaster, referred to earlier. As can be seen, it's quite rough, rather like an exaggerated anti-slip coating.
Good to have a rational explanation, as it was Jeff who noticed it, and asked me my opinion - for what it was worth !

Just pulled up this snippet Andy and Terry re the rough leading edge on these Strikemaster.

The spin problem was caused because removal of the tip tanks resulted in a greater fuselage weight (and thus inertial moment) relative to the wings (something known as the 'B : A Ratio'). This was cured by the fitting of the strakes to the nose (the strakes around the engine intakes are there for a different reason and are common to all JP5 types).

The stall problem was cured by the fitting of a roughened leading edge surface to the outboard part of both wings (the grey area ahead of the red on the models). This was an adhesive coating that actually felt like rough concrete! The idea being that this would increase the pre-stall buffet and result in wing drop at the stall (i.e. the tips stall before the main part of the wing), thus giving a more defined stall entry.
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