Wind Tunnel Models

Just out of interest, the flight-ready Mambas went to the Berkshire Aviation Group at Woodley and as far as I know, they still have them. The rig powerplant went to Duxford, they were then sold but the props were dumped on the old parade ground - they were still there a few years ago. We bought the rig Mambas from the Navy at Manadon, Plymouth. They used cartridge start but we converted ours to electric starters - used to sheer the drives until we incorporated a two stage start sequence to releave the torque on the shaft. One Mamba was started on the electric start and when that had reached temp, we opened her up, un-feathered the second engine to windmill it, engage the second starter and opened up this engine too. The smell of the burning kerosene and the noise was just great - I loved those times. We had to do leak checks and generally maintain the engines, they never really let us down apart from the batteries, always had problems with those, change the odd igniter not much else to do. We could simulate forward flight by running a wind tunnel with the airflow or slipstream passing over the engines, this had the secondary function of releaving the stress on the prop tips as the blades were always running quite close to the concrete floor. We relieved our stress of impending redundancy by getting pissed on strong cider at lunch time in the clubhouse (which had remained open long after Hatfield had closed) and then carrying out a leak check with two sets of rotating blades keeping us company.