I remember the Optica (OP) over the skies of Belfast when I was a kid. I remember hearing the whine of an engine overhead one day riding my bike, spent ages looking for it in the sky, finally seeing the odd shape. It intrigued me for years and when the internet came around for me and my passion for aviation, I was really chuffed to find out about it. G-BMPF was the airframe that was used for a time for surveillance.
Thought that was precisely what the optima was designed for. Police surveillance and similar applications. Slow speed, good all round visibility, long loiter time, cheaper alternative to a helicopter. Pretty pointless aircraft for any other application.
The one I posted is the Short SC1, it’s painted on the nose! It was the first true fixed- wing VTOL jet, with five engines, four for vertical lift, and one for horizontal flight, it was also the first aircraft of its type to be able to transition from vertical to horizontal flight, and the first with fly-by-wire technology. The photo I have, I’m certain, was taken in 1958. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_SC.1
Bugger. Looking for a pic of this plane and found it crashed killing the pilot this year. I built a scale slope soaring version of it. A delightful craft.
The Gannet didn’t look quite so ungainly in its ASW rôle, but it was a big plane!
I put together a book about the Gannet years ago, and I had a large stack of photos to choose from, a couple of which showed a Gannet that lost both outer folding wingtips in flight, the pilot kept it in the air, and landed it safely.
Sadly, I can’t find a copy of it now, I thought I’d kept a copy of all the books I worked on, but it seems not. 😕
Well, after a fair bit of grepping around the interwebz, I managed to find a copy on Amazon; sodding heck, I wish I’d kept a few copies now!
I was always impressed with the Israeli pilot who landed an F15 after losing a wing in a mid-air collision. I think everyone would have given him a pass if he’d just bailed out.
The rest of the plane is expensive, he may have thought they would dock his wages if he came back without it.
CFH, Sibson uses a Cessna Caravan now. Skyvans are getting rare; expensive to run and need a lot of jumpers to be worth it. DeLand only bring it out when they have bigway jumping on and need two planes.
I always liked the X-29. Forward swept wings just look so awesome