Legacy Hornets

[willedoo]

Our local air museum, the Queensland Air Museum has been trying to obtain one of the classic Hornets, so on behalf of the museum, I'm begging for e-petition signatures. Hopefully the link might spread a bit as every signature counts. The museum has plenty of people on it's side in local, state and federal areas, but the federal government is flatly refusing requests and will scrap the remaining Hornets rather than allocate any more to museums. The problem is, there's only one chance at obtaining a Hornet and that's before they're scrapped; once they're gone, they're gone forever. None have been allocated to any Queensland museums and QAM, Australia's largest air museum, has unfortunately missed out. A Hornet would be a great addition to the museum. The RAAF fast jet line up at the museum includes an F8 Meteor, CAC Sabre, Mirage 111, a Macchi trainer and an F-111. All ex RAAF except the Meteor. It's ex UK, ex Singapore and detailed to represent the RAAF Meteor flown in Korea by WO Ron Guthrie who was the first person in the world to perform a combat ejection.

 

Link to the e-petition:

https://www.qldair.museum/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR3CrEK4TkeMUjOmTOS0dBuJB8fxe1M9G5yLK4ETuEMlGj3E1c7o24zCaLo_aem_AYVOprRVBzVWx6krUcwDtETL0q5yykUxQlrLrEpasihq_BUhBYL3Uaqq9Pz0NzgYqnQhLEsrJVG9hTlaD7vS9UEn

[Marty_d]

Signed.  I think it's a crying shame that they scrap these aircraft instead of giving them to museums (or Ukraine!)

 

It'd be a good idea to post this in Rec Flying too Willedoo.  There's a lot of people over there who'd be on your side, who don't necessarily look at Social Australia.

 

 

 

Edited June 7 by Marty_d

[Jerry_Atrick]

Done.. and ditto!

[red750]

Done.

[willedoo]

Thanks everyone. I might copy and paste the main part of the post to the other site.

[old man emu]

Perhaps there was something in the original purchase contract that prevented Australia from passing ownership of the aircraft to anyone else at the end of its useful life.

 

One would think, however, that a fully stripped out fuselage with rotors still attached would not yield any military secrets, so would be OK to display.

[facthunter]

You are on to something there.  Nev

[willedoo]

1 hour ago, old man emu said:

Perhaps there was something in the original purchase contract that prevented Australia from passing ownership of the aircraft to anyone else at the end of its useful life.

 

One would think, however, that a fully stripped out fuselage with rotors still attached would not yield any military secrets, so would be OK to display.

It's not the case here. Eight were allocated to museums and 25 sold to Canada. The rest were earmarked for scrapping. The ownership of the museum allocations remains with the RAAF, which means the RAAF continues to own them but they are on permanent loan to the museums. Accordingly there's a lot of restrictions on what the museums can do with the aircraft. For an example, for a long time the museum couldn't open the F-111 cockpit and let the public sit inside it on open cockpit days. Over the years they've become more lenient there. It probably helped a bit by having two tour guides who were ex F-111 crew. I think the RAAF still clean and maintain the F-111; I don't think they trust museum staff with the job.

[rgmwa]

Done

[spacesailor]

Could the " ejection " seat still be hot  ! . Or other part be considered ' dangerous. 

spacesailor

[Marty_d]

Any dangerous /explosive bits can be removed or made safe.

[facthunter]

The "material" it's made from ay be an issue. It's an incredible machine to get into. I've never seen anything else like it..   Nev

[willedoo]

15 hours ago, spacesailor said:

Could the " ejection " seat still be hot  ! . Or other part be considered ' dangerous. 

spacesailor

Did I hear someone mention ejection seats? Caution - boring alert.

 

spacey, all they need to remove is the seat's explosive charges which is a simple job. Newer seats have more charges than the older ones and they also have several small pyro-cutters that need to be removed as well as the rocket packs. The pyro-cutters cut belts and restraining cords on parachute and survival packs. The older seats were much more simple in their workings. As an example, an old Martin Baker MK.2E seat I did a cosmetic restoration on only had one primary charge, one auxiliary charge and one small (about .6 calibre) drogue gun charge. Those charges got the seat out of the aircraft and the drogue deployed. The rest of the sequence mechanisms were just mechanical consisting of tensioned springs, time released locking star wheels and cams. Even the old MB MK.2 seat from the early 1950's was quite sophisticated compared to the MiG-15 and Iskra seats that I have. The Mig-15 seat (KK-1) didn't have a drogue and was prone to severe tumbling. The Polish TS-11 Iskra seat (SK-1) which is very similar and based on the KK-1, also had no drogue system but had fixed plywood wing sections bolted on around the head and shoulder region to act as a stabiliser. In those days things were a bit rough in the east as far as ejection seat development goes. The Brits were way ahead of the game back then.

 

Just for interest, the photo below shows an SK-1M seat removed from a TS-11 aircraft and shows the plywood stabilising wings situated between the seat back and the head rest. The stabilisers and drogues work to slow the seat down and prevent tumbling, but another important role is to push the seat into an initial horizontal plane to present a smaller cross section to the wind blast during a high speed ejection. The TS-11 Iskra was a Polish built two seat, single engine jet trainer. The Poles were hoping to sell it to the Soviets and Eastern Block countries but the Czech L-29 was the winner there. I think only Poland and India had the TS-11, and it was still in service until fairly recent times. It went into service in 1964 but they used a seat based on a more than ten year old design. Probably for weight saving I would guess.

 

[willedoo]

Here's my SK-1 Iskra seat. It needs a complete re-restoration as the previous owner, while well meaning, did a man cave restoration on it (wrong colours, inappropriate and irrelevant stickers, mounting on an office chair base with a made up seat base). His idea was something for the man cave that people could sit in, which is fine for that sort of thing but just not cricket for a serious collector. Apart from that, it's in very good original condition and complete.

 

Edited June 8 by willedoo