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SUNDAY 24 JUNE 2012

Gloucestershire Airport held its third Charity Open Day on Sunday 24 June 2012 and although other commitments prevented me from staying for the whole event I was able to take these photographs before acquiring two 1/144 scale models from Vulcan To The Sky Club ahead of their display the following weekend at the Gloucester Model Railway Exhibition at Hucclecote.

Gloucestershire Airport, GL51 6SR - located at 51 degrees 53' 65" North, 2 degrees 10' 03" West and 101 feet above mean sea level - has the internationally recognised coding EGBJ and the radio call sign Gloster when communicating with aircraft on 122.90 MHz.  It also boasts three runways,  the 18 metre wide 800 metre long 18/36, the 34 metre wide 972 metre long 04/22 and the 1419 metre long 09/27, giving Gloucestershire Airport the ability to handle a wide spectrum of general aviation including small turboprop airliners and business jets.

As such, the organisations involved in the presentation of the Open Day ranged from airlines, flying schools and the aerospace industry to the resurgent Jet Age Museum, classic car collectors and community groups. All proceeds from the Open Day went to Help for Heroes and Aerobility.

Having just completed a 1/144 scale model Dassault Falcon 20 for display on Terminal 1 at Hucclecote, my eyes and camera were immediately drawn to the line up of American registered Cessna Citation business jets to the right of the apron as viewed from The Aviator and also to their ancestor, the Cessna 525 Citation Jet N224CJ (constructor's number 5250224, pictured below) parked to the left of the terminal building.

From the moment in 1910 when he saw an aviation exhibition in Oklahoma City, Clyde Vernon Cessna’s greatest wish was to fly - and when he learned that aviators were paid as much as $1 000 per show, the wish became a life-changing opportunity for the 30-year-old Kansas farmer and car salesman.

His first aircraft, named "Silverwing" and based on the French Bleriot XI, finally flew in June 1911 after months of rebuilding after crashes and in 1927, after years spent training other pilots and building and flying aircraft, he founded the Cessna Aircraft Corporation in Wichita, Kansas.  The Corporation's first aeroplane, the Cessna All Purpose, first flew on 13 August 1927 and was remarkable for its high cantilever monoplane wing, the first without supporting struts or braces.

Technical innovation was to be a hallmark of Cessna products for decades to come, although Clyde Cessna himself sold his company to his nephews during the Great Depression and died in 1954, just two years before the launch of the single-engined high-wing Cessna 172 - still being made and the most-produced aircraft in the World. 

Indeed, today the Cessna Aircraft Company - a division of Textron Inc since 1992 - is the leading designer and manufacturer of light and midsize business jets, utility turboprops and single engine aircraft, having sold and delivered more aircraft than anyone else in history – 193,500 and counting.

Cessna's first business jet, the FanJet 500, officially named the Citation, made its maiden flight on 15 September 1969 with the first production model being sold to Levitz Furniture Corporation in 1972.

The Citation II was first delivered in 1978, the same year in which a Citation II became the 500th member of the Citation family to be sold.  In 1982 another Citation II became the 1000th Citation to be sold, this time to the Indium Corporation, and Cessna introduced the Citation III intercontinental mid-size business jet, the first example of which was sold to golf legend Arnold Palmer.

Deliveries of the Citation V began in 1989 with the Citation VI variant of the Citation III (650), being introduced in 1990 and both the Citation VII and Citation Jet - intended as a replacement for the 1969 vintage Citation and Citation 1 - taking to the air for the first time in 1991.  The Cessna Citation X first flew in 1993, and in the same year the Citation Ultra was announced as the successor to the Citation V.

In 1995 The Citation Bravo, successor to the Citation II, made its first flight followed a year later by the Citation Excel while 28 April 1999 marked the first flight of the prototype CJ2.  The first CJ3, of which N27UB, (constructor's number 525B-0225 pictured below), is an example, took its first flight on 17 April 2003.

First flown on 29 April 1991, the Model 525 Cessna Citation Jet CJ used a modified version of the original Citation's forward fuselage, but with a new supercritical laminar flow wing, and a new T-tail configured tailplane.  The CitationJet's fuselage was also 11 inches (27 cm) shorter than the Citation I's, but had a lowered centre aisle for increased cabin height.

The following CJ1 and CJ1+ featured improved avionics and, in the latter case, full authority digital engine control (FADEC)

The CJ2 (Model 525A) - first flown on 28 April 1999 - was a 5' stretch extension of the CJ1 with the 2006 vintage CJ2+ also featuring upgraded avionics and FADEC.

The Model 525B Citation CJ3  - first delivered in December 2004 - was a further stretching of the CJ2 with the standard cabin specification including six club seats and a baggage compartment accessible in flight as well as an externally accessed compartment.  The CJ3 also features a trailing-link tricycle landing gear.

The Model 525C Citation CJ4 - as represented by N95FP (constructor's number 525C0088, pictured below) - had its fuselage stretched by a further two feet compared to the CJ3 and borrowed its moderately swept rather than straight wings from the Citation Sovereign.  The Citation CJ4 first flew from Witchita, Kansas, on 5 May 2008 with deliveries beginning in 2010.

The two Rolls Royce AE 3007C1 engines have solid titanium blades and a three-stage low-pressure turbine. The engine's fan has approximately a 5 to 1 bypass ratio for improved fuel efficiency and low acoustic signature for the 3 216 nautical mile range business jet which made its its maiden flight on 21 December 1993. 

The first Citation X was delivered in July 1996 to golfer and long-time Cessna customer Arnold Palmer and the aircraft can also be recognised by its highly swept ( 37 degree ) supercritical wing and matching vertical and horizontal tail surfaces.

Design work on the original Avro 652 began in May 1933 when Imperial Airways approached A.V. Roe with a specification for a four seat passenger aeroplane capable of flying 420 miles at a cruising speed of 130mph and by August 1933 Roy Chadwick was proposing a low-wing monoplane, with manually operated retractable landing gear and powered by a pair of Armstrong Siddeley Cheetah V radial engines.

Imperial Airways placed a first order for two Avro 652s in April 1934, only for the Air Ministry to ask A.V Roe for a coastal reconnaissance version  - later known as the Type 652A  - a month later.  By the end of May 1934 the military variant was off the drawing board and first flew on 24 March 1935, just thirteen days after Imperial Airways had taken delivery of its first Type 652.  Having proved to have a longer range than the rival de Havilland DH 89 M, what became known as the Anson GR1 went into production under Air Ministry Specification 18/35.

First equipping 48 Squadron Royal Air Force in March 1936, the Anson was the first monoplane to enter RAF service, the first aircraft with retractable landing gear, and the fastest twin engined aircraft.

However, by the outbreak of World War II the Avro Anson was set to be replaced by the more powerful Lockheed Hudson, although on 1 June 1940 one Anson of 500 Squadron claimed two Messerschmitt Bf 109s!  By 1941 however Avro Ansons were relegated to the role of trainers and air-sea rescue.

The Avro Anson Mk I was the most numerous version of the aircraft. A total of 6 742 were produced, 3 935 at Woodford and the rest at Yeadon. The Mk I was powered by two Armstrong Siddeley IX radial engines. It was armed with two machine guns – one fixed forward firing Vickers gun in the nose and one Lewis gun in a dorsal turret and could carry two 100lb bombs under the wing centre section and eight 20lb bombs under the wings.

It was particularly nice to see an Avro Anson back at Gloucestershire Airport as they not only equipped the then RAF Staverton as a training airfield during World War II but one of them, N4877, was part of the Skyfame Museum at Staverton from 1963 to 1978.

As the Second World War ended, the Brabazon Committee was established to examine help convert the British aircraft industry to civil production and the Anson C.19 was first developed early in 1945 to match the Committee’s Specification 19.  This saw civil service as the Avro 19 and was based on the RAF's Mk XI, but with five oval windows on each side of the fuselage and a properly furnished interior rather than the bare military finish of the wartime transports.

The Avro 19 then entered RAF service as the Anson Mk C.19, with 264 examples being new built or converted from Mk XIIs by 1946 and remaining in service as a light transport and communications aircraft until 1968.

Before production finished in 1952, the Anson range had expanded to include T21 navigation trainer, of which WD413 was one of 252 delivered to the Royal Air Force.  Originally allocated to Number 1 Basic Air Navigation School at Hamble, the 1950 vintage Yeadon built aircraft was later converted to C21 passenger transport configuration and served with both Bomber Command Communication Flight at RAF Booker and Fighter Command Communication Flight at RAF Bovingdon before joining 23 Maintenance Unit at RAF Aldergrove as instructional airframe 7881M.

Sold into civilian use in 1977, WD413 was then registered as G-BFIR and spent eleven years on the air show circuit before its Permit To Fly expired on 22 March 1988.  After storage at Strathallan, Teesside and Leigh-on-Solent it was restored to its silver RAF livery at Duxford in 1996 before officially joining Coventry based Air Atlantique as G-VROE on 3 March 1998.

The rectangular tandem control surfaces located behind the cropped delta wings were operated via long pushrods by nose-mounted actuators, powered by compressed air from bottles at the rear. The lead-tellurium (PbTe) infra red seeker was mounted under an eight-faceted conical arsenic trisulphide "pencil" nose - less prone to ice accretion than a rounded nose - while proximity fuzes for the warhead were located behind the two bands of triangular seeker windows. The warhead itself was at the rear of the missile, wrapped around the exhaust of the Magpie rocket motor.  The propellants used in the Magpie motor were highly toxic and so required armourers to wear protective clothing.

Although designed to lock on to the hot exhaust of an enemy aircraft being pursued by the launch interceptor, Firestreak was slaved to the interceptor's radar prior to release and as such its thermionic valves required cooling to -180°C (-292°F) by means of anhydrous ammonia pumped in from the parent aircraft to improve the signal to noise ratio.

However, Firestreak could only engage if fired from within 20 degrees of the target and could not be successfully fired in clouds.  For this reason Firestreak was joined in service by the more powerful and able Hawker Siddeley Red Top AAM in 1964.  Distinguished by its rounded nose and reverse-delta wings, Red Top used transistors instead of valves and employed high pressure air to cool the seeker head.

The Skylane nomenclature was first applied to the 1957 vintage 182A model, developed from the 182 of 1956 which itself was the tricycle undercarriage devlopment of the tailwheel Cessna 180. 

As the Skylane evolved - and became second only to the 172 as the best selling Cessna aircraft - it acquired a swept vertical fin, wider fuselage, rear "omni-vision" window and enlarged baggage compartment although the post 1996 "restart" aircraft - built in Wichita once again after changes in US liability laws - had different engines and new seating.  The latest Skylanes also have Garmin glass cockpits and the new 182NXT version will be powered by a diesel engine burning Jet-A fuel rather than the current avgas.

The Cessna 152 was officially released in 1978 as a modernisation of the proven Cessna 150 design and intended to compete with the contemporary Beechcraft Skipper and Piper Tomahawk.  Additional design goals were to improve the useful payload, decrease internal and external noise levels and to run better on the newly introduced 100LL fuel.

While over 7 000 Cessna 152s had rolled out of Wichita by the time that Cessna first abandoned making light aircraft in 1985, a number of A152 and FA152 aerobatic variants had also been assembled by Reims Aviation of France from 1978.

Each of the 315 Reims FA152 Aerobats have been certified for +6 / -3G manoevres and have jettisonable doors and cushions which can be removed to allow the crew to wear parachutes.

First flown in 1958, the Piper Aztec can trace its ancestry back to the Stinson Division of the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation which as bought by Piper Aircraft.  The inherited PA-23 concept was for a low-winged four-seat all-metal monoplane with a twin tail and two 125 bhp Lycoming piston engines, but this performed so badly after its first flight on 2 March 1952 that it was rebuilt with a single vertical stabiliser, 150 bhp engines and entered production as the Piper Apache.

The Apache further evolved with even more powerful engines and a swept fin leading edge into the Aztec which, after 1961, featured six seats, a longer nose to incorporate a baggage compartment and revised instruments and controls.  Production continued until 1982.

Developed from the earlier Rotorway Executive 90 helicopter, the 115 mph Rotorway Executive 162F has a teetering, two-bladed rotor and a two bladed tail rotor powered by a RotorWay International 162F liquid cooled four stroke engine designed by Rotorway International, the third largest helicopter manufacturer in the USA.

Although new to Britain, the Rotax-powered Bredstedt-built Breezer is a proven ten year old German design with a maximum cruise speed of 118 knots and the ability to take off and land in only 140 metres of grass or tarmac.  It can also carry two adults and their overnight bags for cross-country trips.

The first of these monoplanes flew from W.A.R.'s base in Santa Paula, California, on 21 August 1974 having been built from fabric / epoxy covered polyurethane foam built up over a wooden framework.  Powered by a 1 600 cc 70 bhp air cooled Volkswagen engine turning a three bladed propeller,  the first WAR Fw190 also had an electrically retractable tailwheel undercarriage.  The example pictured at Staverton below had been completed in 2005 after 5 years of home building.

Another Piper aircraft, this time with a single engine and low wings, was G-HACK, a 1959 vintage example of a two seat PA-18 Super Cub first flown in 1949 but with roots going back to the Taylor E-2 Cub of the 1930s.  Often involved in bush flying, banner and glider towing courtesy of their 150 bhp Lycoming engines, 9 000 of these rugged aircraft were built over a period of 40 years.

Announced in October 1961, the Super Minx gave Rootes and particularly its Hillman marque an expanded presence in the upper reaches of the family car market. It has been suggested that the Super Minx design was originally intended to replace, and not merely to supplement, the standard Minx, but was found to be too big for that purpose. An estate car joined the range in May 1962, and a two-door convertible in June 1962. However, the convertible never sold in significant numbers with the last one being made in June 1964, ahead of the introduction, in September 1964, of the Super Minx Mark III.

The four seat two-door Stag retained the saloon's McPherson strut and semi trailing arm suspension and drive train and also featured a B-pillar roll bar hoop connected to the windscreen frame by a T-bar to meet American rollover and structural rigidity requirements of the time.  A removable hard top was also available and the Stag's Italian styling was to influence later Triumph cars.

The 2.5 litre engine of the Triumph 2000 was initially intended for the new drophead but by the time it went into production this had been replaced by a 3 litre overhead cam V8

A key aim of Triumph's engineering strategy at the time was to create a family of engines of different size around a common crankshaft. This would enable the production of power plants of capacity between 1.5 and 4 litres, sharing many parts, and hence offering economies of manufacturing scale and of mechanic training. A number of iterations of this design went into production, notably a slant-four cylinder engine used in the later Triumph Dolomite and Triumph TR7, and a V4 variant manufactured by StanPart that was initially used in the Saab 99.

The Stag's V8 was the first of these engines into production. Sometimes described as two four-cylinder engines Siamesed together, it is more correct to say that the later four-cylinder versions were half a Stag engine (the left half in the case of the Triumph engines and the rear half in the case of the Saab).

It has sometimes been alleged that Triumph were instructed to use the proven all-aluminium Rover V8 originally designed by Buick but claimed that it would not fit.  Although there was a factory attempt by Triumph to fit a Rover engine, which was pronounced unsuccessful, the decision to go with the Triumph V8 was probably driven more by the wider engineering strategy and by the fact that the Buick's different weight and torque characteristics would have entailed substantial re-engineering of the Stag when it was almost ready to go on sale. Furthermore Rover, also owned by British Leyland, could not necessarily have supplied the numbers of V8 engines to match the anticipated production of the Stag anyway.

From a more practical perspective, the Stag soon gained an unenviable reputation for poor reliability due to such design faults as the coolant pump being set above the engine - making both components vulnerable to overheating - and poorly hardened water pump drive gears wearing out.  Similarly, the engine timing chain was wont to stretch, the metal alloy used to cast the engine block needed year round corrosion-inhibiting anti-freeze and many of the engine blocks themselves were poorly cast.

As a result many owners re-engined their Stags with Rover or Ford Essex V8s or Buick or Triumph V6s although today around 9 000 Stags survive with many of the early faults that British Leyland engineers could not fix in the 1970s resolved by enthusiasts.