Will that old Vulcan's engines run? Bluebird jet boat team turn to Cold War bomber What do you do when your jet-powered speedboat restoration project grinds to a halt because of bureaucracy? Obviously, you find yourself a convenient Vulcan bomber and start restoring the engines to running condition, as the Bluebird Project is currently doing. The Bluebird Project came together to restore the 1960s British …
Avro. Four engines - either Merlin or Olympus
Five Olympus engines if you count Vulcan XA903 which had an Olympus 593 slung under the bomb-bay as part of the engine development flying test-bed for Concorde.
Oh, for a moment I thought you meant the EJ200 out of the Eurofighter, as slated to be used in the Bloodhound SSC, which brings us back around to world speed records (or attempts to achieve them).
As for noises, I honestly don't know if I could pick between the Olympus or the Merlin. Objectively though the Olympus definitely has the edge in volume!
Brings back memories of a rather special day at Tattershall Castle in Lincolnshire a few years back.
It's a short distance from RAF Coningsby where the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight are based, and whilst I was up on the roof of the castle the flight took off and were doing some practice basically around the castle.
Quite stirring to see the planes from such an unusual viewpoint a hundred and something feet up in the air. And as for the noise up that close, absolutely magical...
I don't think I've been up Tattershall Castle since I was about nine years old. All I remember is that it was a long haul up the spiral staircases and there were parts of the roof either reinforced by scaffolding poles or blocked off by scaffolding poles. I hope it's in a much better state now, because it stands out magnificently against the Big Sky and deserves to be preserved.
Ah, shit, I've just googled it. It looks like the old gravel quarries have been turned into plastic holiday attractions, which will no doubt improve the view from the Castle immeasurably.
If, for whatever reason, you are in a position to own and operate a Merlin (or several) you could do a lot worse than look up my friends down at The 51 Factory. Their inventory is so large that there is no point in even trying to describe what they have, so check it out for yourself. Basically, if you need it, they probably have it new, unused, and in the box from the 1950s. And if they don't have it new, they have it in "run-in, but never flown" condition. Recommended.
@jake: This is what happens when hoarding is profitable, eh? I had no idea. I find it incredible (but laudable) that such a stockpile has endured for so many years. There must have been many near misses where it all could have ended up at the recycler.
Don't let my wife see those pictures.
I wouldn't call it hoarding. I'd call it ensuring adequate inventory. Or perhaps cornering the market.
The 600+ tons of engine hardware is impressive, but the real treasure is the documentation and tooling that they have somehow managed to save from the scrap bin. It's one of those places that a gear-head can get lost in for hours ... and sadly becoming rare in our increasingly nanny-state world.
A Lancaster flew low over my house on Saturday. I could recognise the sound of the Merlin's well before it got overhead, but unfortunately could not drop what I was doing to look at it.
I used to see the Vulcan flying regularly (as I live not far south of Bruntingthorpe) and I just had to go to its last flight to hear the 'howl'.
The sound of the Merlin engine just edges it for me.
"I used to see the Vulcan flying regularly (as I live not far south of Bruntingthorpe) and I just had to go to its last flight to hear the 'howl'."
I missed the last flight, sadly, but I have fond memories of a squadron of the things taking off not far from where I grew up. The windows would rattle as they lumbered overhead at very low altitude.
Two memories stand out:
1. A pair of F-4 Phantoms, on afterburner, formation takeoff (I was in a parking lot next to end of the runway). "Loud" doesn't even begin to describe it.
2. B-52 on final, 200 ft overhead (again, at the end of the runway). "Aluminum overcast", indeed. The wife grew up off the end of the Westover AFB runway. B-52s overhead were a daily occurrence during the Vietnam conflict.
// why no aircraft icon? Too hard to choose the type, I'd guess.
// my vote's for "Spitfire"
The SR71 actually leaked fuel when it wasn't hot:
"Fuselage panels were manufactured to fit only loosely with the aircraft on the ground. Proper alignment was achieved as the airframe heated up and expanded several inches. Because of this, and the lack of a fuel-sealing system that could handle the airframe's expansion at extreme temperatures, the aircraft leaked JP-7 fuel on the ground prior to takeoff."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird
I've heard that story before, probably for most people via Top Gear.
However I'm struggling to imagine how expansion with temp can make everything seal up nicely.
Contraction - sure , but expansion ?
hows that gonna work?
The wording on all versions of the story if seen are pretty vague
fit only loosely with the aircraft on the ground.
"However I'm struggling to imagine how expansion with temp can make everything seal up nicely."
Imagine placing a fairly loose fitting washer around say a flaccid body part, then perhaps introduce some images of scantily clad humans. Then you'll see how expansion can seal things, although 'nicely' might not be appropriate...
I assume the combustion chamber is made of metal, with a metal inlet. When warm, the whole thing expands, stretching the diameter of the inlet, bringing it into true with the feed (which I guess is also metal - however a metal pipe won't widen at the same rate as an inlet set in a metal wall).
The SR-71 engines were notorious amongst the pilots for being finicky, temperamental and downright difficult beasts to use. That was largely down to their complexity, since they had to function in a very wide range of conditions from sub-sonic right up to quite a high mach number (the exact details of which are classified). The basic problem they had to solve was how to deal with a supersonic airflow; they did it by slowing the air down to sub-sonic speeds and then speeding it up again inside the engine.
As the story goes, on a 1973 recon mission over the conflict zone during the Arab-Israeli war, missiles from both sides locked on to the Blackbird. Given the improved performance of said missiles, the pilot's response was to firewall the throttles, and then start doing the 360 scan for any launches. That Bird might have exceeded 3000mph/5000kph before they dialed back the thrust once out over the Med.
Something that I've remembered from a posting in one of the rec.aviation newsgroups in the 90s, is that in supersonic mode there is a conical device on the front of the engines that moves forward to control the airflow, and the majority of the thrust in this mode is actually generated off this device, rather than from the exhaust gases. It's a bit like the low pressure on top of an aircraft wing contributes much more to the lift than any raised pressure on the underside.
The spike created a shockwave and it was positioned such that this shockwave was JUST inside the lip of the engine. Too far back and the airflow entered the engine too fast, causing damage, too far forward and the engine was starved of air and stopped producing any thrust at all in an instant (Called an unstart, these could apparently be very violent in the SR71 and A12). The compression of the air by this shockwave did the majority of the compression and most of the high pressure air was bled from midway through the compressor stage of the engine and injected directly into the afterburner through bypass doors. It mixed with the hot exhaust of the engine and provided a lot of extra thrust. (What percentage seems to still be classified because I find a lot of different values from "the majority", to "about half").
I had the fortune of seeing the concord fly at an airshow in California back in the day. For $50 they would fly you half way to Hawaii and back. Being a poor teen, I didn't get that pleasure. I did get to see it taxiing on the runway at Brown Field. What a noisy racket. Not the wonderful growl/whine of a combat aircraft (of which I saw plenty living 10 miles from Top Gun school at Miramar). It was more like the hellacious assault of a Harrier. But still, jet noise.
Years later, after grounding, I was able to do a walk through. Glad I didn't get to fly in it as it had about as much room as a Cessna 172!
I was on a bus going through the Aldwych when Concorde went over. Less than a couple thousand feet? Believe the idea was to gauge Londoners’ reaction to the decibel level. I was virtually still a kid and loved it!*
*but then as an actual kid lived in one of the flight paths out of Greenham Common. The windows shook way in advance, allowing time to run out and watch them go over
Seen XH558 just before retirement, that howl at near full throttle.
Funny but seen it overfly our home town 5 or 6 times.
Had the Lanc fly low over it as well, that was good.
Only other equivalents have been heritage traction railtours, either 1 loco twin engines, or 2 locos with big V16s.
Our last office used to reverberate if a Chinook overflew, the floor bounced.
While it was horrendously difficult to look after and unreliable in service, it had a fantastic power/weight ratio in its day and is a marvel of engineering. There is an animation of the pistons firing and the three crankshafts' operation here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_Deltic
One of my earliest reliable railway memories (the other was the first electric MU on the Liverpool Street to Hertford line) was watching from a signal box as a Deltic hauled a train up from King's Cross. This must have been around 1963. The lack of smoke and vibration as it passed was noteworthy.
The Deltics replaced more than twice the number of Pacifics successfully, so unreliability has to be seen in the context of later Diesels, not steam locomotives. Unfortunately, as with the Doxford engines versus the Sulzer engines, British engineering was often "clever", but simple and reliable tended to win out.
The clever bit about the introduction of the Deltics was the use of the reliability and supply contract that the engines (power plant not locomotive) were supplied and maintained by English Electric. This meant the availability of the locomotive was much better than other diesels.
See "I tried to run a railway" by Gerry Finnes and "The Deltics a Symposium". The latter has a GA for the 4400HP 'Super Deltic'.
Due to someone failing to deliver refurbished class 769 trains in time for the new timetable and class 15x DMUs being away for modifications, Tansport for Wales is running class 37 locos with mkIII carriages at peak times on the Rhymney valley line until the end of the year. They used to be common on the line but I had completely forgotten the noise they make...
M.
According to the source of all knowledge, Wikipedia Mark III's had their underfloor workings enclosed, the picture at the top of the article shows carriages without the enclosures.
Thumb up for mentioning Class 37s working on local hauled trains, I miss their "grumble"
Sorry, yes, mkII. Can I blame the onscreen keyboard?
There are posters in the stations telling you how to open the doors using the external handles and warning you not to lean out of the windows. They actually had extra staff on during the first few weeks to make sure no-one emulated Vyvyan from the Young Ones episode 'Bambi'.
M.
BR Coaches are easy
Underframes with trusses - Mark 1
Rounded ends roughly 64ft long - Mark 2 family
HST trailer or 75ft long with enclosed underfloor stuff - Mark 3
Mark 2
Older style slam door Mark 2 & 2A
Mark 2 has Mark 1 style corridor doors, 2A folding doors like rest of Mark 2s
2B 2C slightly longer and wider doors, no centre doors, a bog at each end. Early 2C look like 2B, later 2C have smaller toilet windows, same body as 2DEF but with vent windows.
2DEF, the aircons, more difficult this.
Generally the TSOs are easy 2D toilets same side, E & F diagonal, D & E 2 aircon fans, F 1 aircon fan.
2F has different toilet hatches, door windows went smaller partway through 2E.
Mark3 usual home is between a couple of power cars, but there were many loco hauled 3A for WCML, slightly different grey band location, buffers, and roof vents are different to HST stock.
The mark 2 stock was interesting, 2 and 2A differences were mainly on brakes and gangway doors. 2 built vac brake, 2A built air brake.
2B was the new no centre door option, 2C was a slight facelift with later ones being ready to convert to air conditioning (hence different toilets). They were supposed to be 2D.
2DEF were a continuous build with 4 or so design changes. A few outliers like 2D FOs with single aircon fan equipment.
2D to 2E was to go from 62 seat to 64 seat, change of interior, half way through door windows were made smaller.
2E to 2F, mainly change of aircon kit, but also change of seats.
I saw XH558 a few times over the years near bruntinghtorpe and a few times on her farewell tour. Took the wife to Weston Supermare to see the Vulcan and she physically gripped my arm and said bloodyhell when the big V flew over us and then stood on its tail, what an immense sound.
And Deltic's well thats another story. What an absolute beast of a locomotive that was/is.
Last time was overflying Pershore at 97% throttle, saw it though quite a bit before, my wife said "The Vulcan is over there".
Stood on the bridge over the Avon watching (and listening) to it climbing away from Throckmorton.
Also seen Vulcans at air displays in the early 70s, went to Anglesey camping a few years in a row, seen a Vulcan, Harrier (hovering). Saw two Hunters crashing into the camp site one year.
XH558 overflew our house after some work a few years ago, sat in garden watching it, with 2 support aircraft.
3 or 4 times that day.
Weirdest was it heading north across the town as we were heading home, side view, looked rather odd, but it could only be 558.
My dad though has partial V bomber induced deafness caused by a workshop near the end of a runway for a year or so.
He has also seen the only flying TSR2.
"Would the young gentleman like a red spot or a white spot?"
I remember buying the tiny Red Spot and Blue Spot transistors individually as a teenage hobbyist (in UK). By appearance they seemed to have been produced by BTH (British Thomson Houston), evidently screened-out rejects from the production line.
Red Spot for Audio, Blue for frequencies up to RF like your MF superhet oscillator/mixer stage. Performance very much a lottery.
I had one that self-combusted from thermal runaway due to high internal leakage current. This was the days of germanium, before silicon.
Saw XH558 at Leuchars air show, rained solidly that day and due to CAA regs not permitted to fly in the rain (madness given it was an all weather ex RAF aircraft with ex RAF crew at the controls.....only in this country, only in this country, they did a few fast taxis, wife said she's never heard so many grown men groan so loudly when they throttled back right before take off......
And Deltic's well thats another story. What an absolute beast of a locomotive that was/is
A few years ago, the war department and I had booked to go on a heritage rail excursion that was pulled by a Deltic (55022, Royal Scots Grey IIRC). We were sitting in the station waiting room and she was getting twitchy about whether or not our train had arrived, and was getting a bit vexed with me for just sitting there saying "relax, it's OK, it's not here yet". She was just starting to nag me about my attitute yet again when the whole station started shaking to the sound of a Deltic engine.
"That's how we know when our train has arrived" I said.
RGS - same one we had locally, seen all 6 preserved and a few in BR service.
York station with a few in, well the whole place shook.
And people wondered why I thought the 3 main attractions in York were station, depot and railway museum.
On a school trip and we cabbed 12
I had a summer job in Horton, which is just at the end of the Heathrow runways. In a crappy old warehouse with no insulation (sound or heating). When Concorde took off you stopped what you were doing becuase you couldn't hold a conversation. Not only could you not hear what the other person was saying, you couldn't hear what you were saying either. And your tea tried to escape from your cup... Although the Concorde version of the Olympus had reheat, which the Vulcan didn't (as I recall).
I've also had the pleasure of being accidentally on the run-in to a couple of airshows, and so had the RAF Battle of Britain flight overfly me at low altitude. 6 Merlin engines make one hell of a din! Amazing noise.
I think I need to go to an airshow - not done that since I was a kid.
I was at Leuchars airshow as an air cadet in the 90s, I remember being in a BT show trailer looking at their "high speed internet" demo when the whole trailer shook like hell, IIRC it was a Belgian F16 over the crowd at <100 feet, never see that now after several people were killed from an aircraft crashing into the crowd a few years back.
Last time I was at Leuchars airshow (a few years before they turned it into an army base) it was a sad shell of what it had been in the 90s, a lot less air craft, no where near as many aircraft demos, a very small number of vendors, high ticket prices and feckless traffic marshalling so it took 4 hours to get 50 feet out of the car park
The stupidity of the move is that all the aircraft are now based out of Lossiemouth which is fogbound for a lot of days a year compared to Leuchars.
We stay in the East of Dundee and would often hear the Tornados and then Typhoons go over. When we first moved up here the Marines up the coast at Condor were still flying Harriers. Which reminds me since they kiboshed Condor I haven't heard a Chinook go over in an age.
Now we just get armament noise from Barry Budden firing range. Sometimes it sounds like a full scale invasion is coming. If we ever get invaded from the east most people here would just shrug and assume It's the Budden.
I have run along the cycle path by there (rail line beside on the left, golf course beyond that, Budden to the right) with an absolutely furious automatic small arms fire noise coming from the right. A passenger unit was passing at the time as well. I wasn't worried but. When they aren't firing you can walk around it and see the huge earth berms behind each range. Well other than the marine exclusion zone where they fire the artillery.
As a teen lived a few miles north of Dundee, been gliding as a teen at Condor (gone now, shame), shooting at Buddon as a cadet, where on an ex someone picked up an unexploded grenade from the grenade range - 90s....
Those berms are the bullet catchers with the shooting butts on the otherside, where the target frames and target storage is, one of our cadet leaders was sunbathing underneath one of the frames (against regs even at that time) bullet ricocheted off the frame and just missed him, shame as he was a twat......
We also used to get a ceasefire whenever a ship went past, just in case a bullet went high, as it would have fallen over the water...
Something for those that may not know, another sad chapter closed on British aviation with the last airworthy BAC1-11 no longer flying with it's last flight the 29th May this year:
http://www.bac1-11jet.co.uk/bac1-11jet.co.uk%20News.htm
It's a plane that has a special place for me as it was the first aircraft I ever flew on and was lucky enough as an 11 year old boy to be invited into the cockpit and sit in the captain's chair during the flight, thanks Captain Oveur (can't remember his name) for an unforgettable experience and BA when you weren't shit, an airline I now refuse point blank to fly with.
The BAC 1-11 was a nice plane, in the '70s I worked on airframes and did the physical installation of a glide slope indicator on one belonging to the current Saudi King (then crown prince).We flew it ti Luton to try a couple of passes to test the landing aid. Our Chief engineer skippered so I was No2 and got to play at the controls, the chief wouldn't let me try an actual landing though .
Back then BA was pleasure to fly on. How things have changed.
True, but in the mid-80's it cost close to £200 for a London-Belfast open return shuttle ticket, today Easyjet will do it for a quarter of that, even cheaper allowing for inflation. Hard to maintain the same level of service in a market like that.
When I went to Spain to work during uni holidays, flew BA out to Spain, spoke to my cousin's then wife a few weeks after I got back (she had been cabin crew on BA until she had unexpectedly got pregnant) she then says "You should have said, I still have pals who work that route, could have got you business class upgrade and free booze etc"....would have been nice to have known that in advance..........
THough did flyFlyBe a few years back when coming home from a job, was a few kilos over on one bag and was trying to rearrange stuff between them, when the manager stopped me and said to the girl working the desk "I'll show you how to override the weight scale when its not reading correctly"
Decent of him as I was knackered (I think it showed) and really just wanted to get home to the Mrs after months away.
For me it has to be any number of Merlin engines, more especially if they are running over half chat. That said, I cannot deny that the awesome ground-shaking roar of the Olympus, et al, have a sonic presence that goes right through you to the core with an energy that can leave you quite pleasurably breathless. But for me the shear harmony of numerous pistons, valves, con-rods, widgets and cranks etc. that are orchestrated oh so beautifully, especially in the case of the Merlin, sing out to the soul in a truly inimical manner. In a word - delightful.
If the corrosion in the cockpit and some of those other pictures is anything to go by it's probably ruined.
And that's before you even think about cleaning out degraded fluids, dealing with all the seals that have rotted and all the miriad faults you'll find with a complex machine that's been poorly stored for years.
Even if it had been in proper storage you'd be asking a lot and this wasn't properly stored.
Icon shows the likely outcome of a test start.
When we were sent to steal parts from all the Vulcans in 82 to convert those still airworthy into tankers for the Falklands "conflict", some of them were in a pretty shoddy state then and that was only after a short time out of service - its amazing how these old kites degrade when they aren't being looked after.
One of the happiest days of my life was stowing away in the bomb aimers seat for a test flight, even after 36 hours on duty without a break.
Oh, yeah. That video series is a (vy well done) real rime sink! Kudos to the team that took on that task. Sad about the nonfunctional read/write memory module, though.
If the owner gets it running, my suggestion would be to acquire a working writeable memory module by donating the working unit to a museum which already has an AGC, thereby gaining the ability to swap their working RAM module into his working system, and be able to display a completely functional AGC.
// probably won't run Linux, though
A friend of mine had a grandfather that, as a child, travelled by stage coach to the west coast of the US, and he also saw a man land on the moon.
Meanwhile, I can barely get a train to anywhere because of those feckless feckers at South Western Railway and my Vodafone signal is invariably shite. What times we live in.
"A friend of mine had a grandfather that, as a child, travelled by stage coach to the west coast of the US, and he also saw a man land on the moon."
My own grandad vividly remembered the newspaper headlines announcing the first powered flight by the Wrights. He also saw the moon landings and took a trip on concord.
My mum was born in 1920. She told us stories about having a crystal set, fetching water from the well at her family's summer cabin, and driving a Model T. One of her family friends became a pilot in the 1930s.
She lived to see TV, satellites, the Bell Telephone System, computers and space travel. She didn't quite make it to the iPhone, which might be just as well...
"... my Vodafone signal is invariably shite."
Well give them the boot then! That's what I did, and I've never made a better move. Better price, better signal, better service, everything's better than Vodafone.
Correction: ANYTHING's better than Vodafone!
"Steam turbines between 1890 and 1901."
Parsons in the Turbinia at the Spithead Review is now what would be called a 'Disruptive Technology'. There were two possible outcomes of a stunt like that, either getting thrown in jail or suddenly having a bulging order book!
Turbinia at Speed is an amazing photo, the bows are out of the water and the person on the conning tower is having to lean in to the wind quite a lot!
I had a very close encounter with a Gnat climbing up a cliff face in a welsh valley. As I came over the top a Gnat came over me I didn't hear anything until I put my head over the edge, it was following the valley floor at what looked like 50ft. I also had the experience of cycling past the end of the runway at RAF Waddington when a Vulcan took off over me. They had warning lights to stop traffic as the came so low over the perimeter fence but they were so far apart that it hadn't been flashing when I passed it and I was just about level with the centre of the runway as be beast flew over. I got a very good look into its undercarriage bay. Having spent 1- years living in Lincoln we did get a bit blase about the Lancaster as we would see it on a daily basis during the show season and at least once a week through the spring. Every school in the county could request a flypast for school fetes etc and the RAF tried to grant them. because of where we lived we always got one because we were on the flight path out of the county.
It's the airframe certification. Now, wait until after Brexit and UK has become a proper banana republic and we can just slip 10 grand to the inspector and, bingo, airframe certified. I knew there had to be a good reason for Brexit.
I really, really want to see a Vulcan flying again!
Got some lovely photos at Welshpool when it was on its final tour.
The restoration work on a world record breaking boat has ground to a halt, so just for something to keep them amused, these guys are restoring and restarting a Vulcan engine that's not been run for 36 years.
Just for something to do?
There aren't enough of these ( ----^ ) for them!
"The restoration work on a world record breaking boat has ground to a halt,"
Maybe you just worded it badly, but it didn't exactly grind to a halt. It's finished. Still needs regular maintenance of course, but the no more restoration.
But yeah, trying to refurbish a Vulcan engine just to stop boredom creeping up on them....
The only time I ever heard a Vulcan was a few seconds before it dug a crater about a mile from my childhood home. The walls of the house shook, the windows rattled and we wondered if we were having an earthquake. Then the big boom. Something I strongly remember but definitely not something to get all misty-eyed about. The crash missed the one-time home of Charles Lindbergh's mother but not by much. (BTW, I went to high school where she taught chemistry albeit decades after she left).
From Wikipedia:
On 24 October 1958, Vulcan B.1 XA908 of No. 83 Squadron crashed east of Detroit, Michigan, USA. A complete electrical failure occurred at around 30,000 ft (9,100 m). The backup system should have provided 20 minutes of emergency power, allowing XA908 to reach one of several airports in the area, but backup power only lasted three minutes due to a short circuit in the service busbar, locking the controls. XA908 went into a steep dive before crashing, leaving a 40-ft (13 m) crater in the ground, which was later excavated while retrieving wreckage. Despite extensive property damage, there were no ground fatalities, only one person on the ground was hospitalized. All six crew members were killed, including the co-pilot, who had ejected. The co-pilot's ejection seat was found in Lake St Clair, but his body was not recovered until the following spring.[218] They were buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Trenton, Michigan, alongside 11 RAF student pilots killed during the Second World War in accidents at nearby Naval Air Station Grosse Ile.
For the people that have never heard or more accurately felt in their bones the flyby of a Vulcan bomber or an F1 car with a real engine before they went all turbo.
Those were real machines and awesome power that nothing we have now can compare to!
Starting up a Challenger 1 and some manuvers around the vehicle park / neutral turn was my all time best power / mechanic experience and I used to fix the things. Those were the days...
Oh yeah and Concorde!
I reckon the government should expand the BBMF / create a variant with the iconic post WW2 warplanes - Lightning, Vulcan, Buccaneer (any other suggestions?, shame the Nimrods were all hastily smashed to smithreens.....)
Hunt is saying he'll issue £18 Billion to the military.....
Perhaps someone should have a word in Boris's earhole about this - British ingenuity, Showing our great engineering heritage etc......sounds like the kinda idea that would be right up his street........
I live a few miles away from Biggin Hill Airport. Every year, during the Biggin Hill airshow, we have all sorts of Military aircraft fly over the house, from the tiny display aircraft (like the Red Arrows) through to the massive bombers.
For that weekend, every 30 seconds, all we can hear is loud jet engines, and it's amazing.
I also like (where possible) to sit in a car near the end of the runway at an airport. Sadly, with modern security procedures, it's not possible to get really close, but I used to get a rush when I could see an airliner at full throttle a few dozen feet overhead. You don't so much hear the roar as feel it.
Snap! CCF nightops at RAF Laarbruch, late 80s. Got bored with the orienteering, thus me and a couple of mates found ourselves lying on the grass in front of the runway for a far more entertaining hour of Tornado touch-and-gos. Extraordinarily loud (and dangerous, thinking about it now.)
I wonder how many groups of schoolboys did the same over the years.
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