Wessex crank up
- From: "Kim Siddorn" <kim.siddorn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 03:09:48 -0000
Gosh, you must all be suffering from too many mince pies! Tap-tap, anyone
in?
On Christmas Eve, I dug out the Bernard Marchal I'd bought at the last
Sodbury Sort out. As is the way of these things, I'd not had it running
since. Although it had a quite distressing amount of compression and a spark
that would have lit Merna Loy, it wouldn't go until I threw some petrol down
the carb, whereupon it started promptly & ran like a clock. This heartened,
I carried it through the house & tucked it into the Volvo ready for the
crank up.
On Christmas Eve, I took delivery of the Weslake Aero engine I'd bought off
E-Bay a couple of weeks before. The nice man brought it up from Helston in
Cornwall as he was staying with his parents for Christmas in Weston. I met
him on the Weston road, thus saving me a 360 miles round trip - bless him, I
say! Full description below sig. line should you be interested.
I took it to the crank up as a static exhibit & it attracted a lot of
attention, too. Even found a MoP that knew what it was ;o))
The Bernard repeated its clock-like performance, fulfilling is duties in a
very frugal fashion. Amusingly, it was a nearly-stationary engine, making
about 90o of a circle on the damp tarmac. I didn't count them, but I'd guess
there were twenty engines present.
I bought an interesting little oil can for £2.00 and a brand new water
container of about five gallons capacity in galvenised steel as a cooling
tank for the L'Aster At £6.00, I bit his hand off!
Brian had done one of his lightning restorations on a Coventry Victor flat
four and very nice it was too. A big 1.8 litre motor, it looked very well
alongside his 300cc MA2 & 800cc flat twin.
Flat twins have a reputation for soaking up the fuel & the four was no
exception, getting through half a gallon in about ten minutes. Arrgh.
There were three Armstrong-Siddeley Diesels present on a trailer in their
working clothes and a Douglas SV45 unusually running on TVO. It's claim to
fame was that it was the last one built, the chap's dad being on final build
at Douglas on the day they went bankrupt. Estimating his chances of getting
paid that week at zero, ho trundled the engine out of the gates on a sack
truck in lieu of payment.
Pictures at
http://community.webshots.com/album/80209411cZenpV/5
the last twelve in the album.
Regards,
Kim Siddorn.
The WAE 342 UAV powerplant is supplied by Meggitt Defence Systems for use
in a range of Unmanned Air Vehicles such as the Snipe, Skeet & Banshee
target drones and Sparrowhawk, MART, Phoenix & Spectre remote reconnaissance
aircraft.
A flat twin, simultaneous-firing two stroke of 342cc, it is of all aluminium
construction, the bores being hard chrome without an iron liner. The three
piece forged steel crank is supported in deep groove ball bearings & carries
two conn rods running on needle roller big ends. Weighing just 7.5 kilos
(16.5 lbs), it produces 26 BHP at 6,750 giving an excellent power to weight
ratio of 0.39kg/kW (0.65lb/bhp),
The Phoenix - pictured here - is a typical aircraft of this type and in
current service with the British Army. Used for a number of activities which
includes long range artillery spotting, it has an all-up weight of 150 kg, a
duration of better than four hours, an operational ceiling of around 9,000
feet and can operate up to 30 miles from its launcher. It is designed for
parachute recovery and can be rebuilt in the field and used repeatedly.
.
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