Historic vehicles are cheap

[Topdog]

......that is compared to historic aircraft.

I have recently been fortunate enough to have a flight in a Jet Provost MK V from North Weald, courtesy of Ken Lyndon-Dykes; who was at the Headcorn bash.

An initial meeting resulted in an invitation to fly the JP with Ken out of North Weald last weekend. I had never flown a jet before but it was a sweet little aircraft and a joy to fly - no vibration and very little noise. It goes very well, running on just paraffin. A lot of paraffin actually - in 45 mins we used over 500 quids worth! But, we did manage to see most of Kent during that time, including the Thames estuary at 300 feet and 240 knots.

Many thanks to Ken who let me drive most of it apart from the take off and landing.

Lucky guy, he has two of them.

[lufbramatt]

yes they seem to be very expensive to run!

 

a little while ago i had to go down to bournemouth airport to do some research on the sea vixen thats based down there. talking to paul the technical director who showed us round the aircraft (they kindly pulled it out of the hanger and took all the covers off and opened the cockpit up for us to get piccies, was a real privilege to get up that close and personal to it- we were allowed to climb up over the cockpit, with the condition "dont touch anything with black and yellow stripes on it!") we got on to the subject of fuel. when "foxy lady" is up they use around 45 litres per minute, but apperently thats dropped from about 56 litres per minute when it had all the military avionics and weapons on board. they spend thousands on fuel every flight.

 

quite staggering when the government are going on at the rest of us to swap our old cars in for newer models to save a few mpg!