Aircraft

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by Griff

...back in the Neutron Jack days...

I used to do the Neutron Jack. But, my mom kept walking in on me, so, I kinda had to back off...

[xoxoxoBruce]

Don't bullshit me, you didn't stop, just found a more secure location.

[Gravdigr]

I got a fucking lock on the door is what I did!

[sexobon]

Sounds like a misnomer to me.

[Griff]

A his seamen died but his building still stands.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Its chance discovery was made by a British backpacker, a keen aircraft enthusiast, who photographed a cannibalized DH9 in a new museum at the Palace of Bikaner in Rajasthan in 1995. He passed the word to an airplane restorer, Guy Black, who visited the palace in India 3 years later. But the aircraft had been moved to the palace's former elephant stables.

There, among piles of elephant saddles, was the airframe of the DH9, engineless, its timbers partly eaten by termites and much of its fabric covering missing. Along one wall, were a dozen DH9 wings. Several tailfins were nearby.

He said: "I could not believe my eyes. The DH9 are as rare's as hen's teeth now and there wasn't a single one in a collection in Britain." In the stables were the remains of three DH9s that been given by Britain to the Maharajah of Bikaner in the early 1920s to help him establish an air force under the post-war Imperial Gift Scheme.

Mr Black bought two of the rotting hulks. D5649, the plane he restored and sold to the Imperial War Museum for nearly £1 million was unveiled at Duxford, Cambridgeshire. The Imperial War Museum, by luck, had a DH9 engine to install in the restored plane.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Jap dive bomber faw down go boom...

[xoxoxoBruce]

Flying disc actually worked...

[xoxoxoBruce]

I've never knowingly seen this stuff, but it was used for a number of things including Olympic torches.

[Carruthers]

The Development of Hiduminium‐RR.58 Aluminium Alloy: The background to the choice of the main structural material for Concorde

Several years before the British and French Governments decided, separately, to initiate feasibility studies into the building of a supersonic transport passenger‐carrying aircraft with an aluminium alloy as the main structural material, the Research and Development Division of High Duty Alloys Ltd. began to compare the relative merits of selected Hiduminium alloys in anticipation of this possible new application.

It was appreciated that the life requirement, for ecenomic reasons, would be between 20,000 and 30,000 hours and that the saturation skin temperature, due to kinetic heating, at speeds of Mach 2·2 and 2·5 would be about 120° and 150°C, respectively.

The Division's considerable experience in the field of developing aluminium alloys for acro‐gas turbine applications for service at temperatures higher than this range, made us optimistic about the possibility of being able to develop a wrought aluminium alloy which would meet all the mechanical property requirements for the construction of a SST aircraft.

LINK

The above was published in 1969, the company having been absorbed into the Hawker Siddeley Aircraft Co by 1965.

A check of the Companies House website shows the existence of 'High Duty Alloys Ltd' in its own right, but it now appears to be in the financial sector and is described as an 'Intermediate investment holding company'.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The Hiduminium alloys or R.R. alloys are a series of high-strength, high-temperature aluminium alloys, developed for aircraft use by Rolls-Royce ("RR") before World War II. They were manufactured and later developed by High Duty Alloys Ltd. The name Hi-Du-Minium is derived from that of High Duty Aluminium Alloys.

The first of these Hiduminium alloys was termed 'R.R.50'. This alloy was first developed for motor-racing pistons, and was only later adopted for aircraft engine use. It was a development of the earlier Y alloy, the first of the nickel-containing light aluminium alloys. These alloys are one of the three main groups of high-strength aluminium alloys, the nickel-aluminium alloys having the advantage of retaining strength at high temperatures, making them particularly useful for pistons.

Early adoption
The alloys were in limited use for aircraft by 1929, being used in the Rolls-Royce R engine that was successful in the Schneider Trophy seaplane races. They quickly spread to other manufacturers, in 1931 being adopted by ABC for their Hornet engine. R.R.50 alloy was used for the crankcase, R.R.53 for the pistons.

Their first mass production use was in the Armstrong Siddeley Special saloon car of 1933. Armstrong Siddeley already having had experience of the alloy, and financial investment in its manufacturer, from their aero engine business.

Advantages of these alloys were recognised worldwide. When 576 pistons in Hiduminium R.R.59 alloy were used for the Italian Marshal Balbo's trans-Atlantic flight, High Duty Alloys used it in their own advertising.

High Duty Alloys Ltd. was founded at Farnham Road, Slough in 1927, by Colonel W. C. Devereux. The company began from the ruins of the World War I aero engine builder, Peter Hooker Limited of Walthamstow. Hookers licence-built the Gnôme engine, amongst other things, and for the aero engines chose to be known as The British Gnôme and Le Rhône Engine Co. They had become expert at working Y alloy.
The post-war reduction in demand, and the plentiful supply of war-surplus engines, made times hard for all engine and component makers. After buying it at the beginning of 1920 BSA reviewed its operations and decided Hooker's should be liquidated. After some years in voluntary liquidation, Hooker's operations ended in late 1927 when its workshops were sold.

Much more.

The 1948 Olympic torches

Ba Concorde - Paperweight

British Aviation

[xoxoxoBruce]

Magic Helicopter

[Carruthers]

Helicopters don't really fly. They are just so ugly the Earth repels them.

[xoxoxoBruce]

That's not just a random snark, it has an aesthetic basis.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The largest private Air Force in the world, Draken in Florida.