Essential viewing tomorrow night on BBC4

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01m81f5

Episode 1 of 2
DURATION: 1 HOUR
In the heady post-war years of the 1950s and 60s, British flying was at its zenith and its aircraft industry flourished in a dazzling display of ingenuity and design brilliance. Having invented the jet engine, Britain was now set to lead the world into the jet age with a new generation of fighters and bombers. The daring test pilots who flew them were as well-known as the football stars of today, while their futuristic-looking aircraft, including the Meteor, Canberra, Valiant, Vulcan and the English Electric Lightning, were the military marvels of the age.

Oh yes! I shall be watching!

Mind if I drop this here as a reminder of one of the finer STW Threads I’ve started?

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/when-wars-were-colder-planes-were-cooler

BRILLIANT!!!

I can thoroughly recommend this too

Oh my lordy – I am deinitely going to be watching this – the headset service gets put back a day!

I might mug up on my downloaded pictures of Vulcans, Victors, Valiants, Javelins, Vampires and Lightnings in preparation.

Oh for the days when planes seemed to take their design ethos straight from the pages of ‘Eagle’.

Saw that this morning while flicking through the TV guide. Already got the reminder set. 🙂

Here’s a cold war jet fan

cheers for the heads up

Reminder set and poised. 😀

I’m going to throw in a recommendation for Skunk Works by Ben Rich in here too.

American cold war genius’ at work.

I have a high pressure turbine blade from a Rolls Royce Olympus jet engine which was fitted to a Vulcan Bomber

High pressure turbine blade by gary_foulger, on Flickr

Useless, but at the same time, very cool!

Lightning-tastic!

🙂

Fair play, STW is still ace. Thanks for the heads up 🙂

TA 😀

Any chance anyone in the UK can record this and the next episode and send it to me out here in Oz on DVD?

Please pretty please!

Cheers for the reminder, it had slipped my mind. Sky box set for record. 😀

Just texted my Dad, to get the Sky+ on record…

For me mind, not for him! 😉

Sooooooo looking forward to watching this, strange really as the cold war was not far from over by the time I was born, but I just think the engineering from the period, on all sides, was absolutely fantastic!

Zokes: I’m also expat. Try installng expat shield and then you can watch on iplayer.

@Squidlord: Expatshield seemed to struggle with the distance (being in Oz). The only one I found that worked well was YourFreedom, but that’s bloody expensive for just one programme (I usually just get it set up for the 6 nations).

I think there was a mention of another VPN service at one point that to me looked promising (but I’d just paid for yourfreedom), but i can’t find any trace of it on here now…

Zokes – I know a couple of t0rr3nt sites that might have it in a day or two.
(I know the morality of these was discussed here a day or two ago. If there was some way I could pay for the BBC from abroad I would. Honestly. Easiest way for me to get UK TV, not that I watch a lot of it)

Cool – shall keep a look out.

Thanks. SKY+ set.

I’ve set it to record the series. All being well with that, I’ll stick the file on my ftp server for you. The file will be in .ts format, which can be viewed with VLC media player.

Send me your email address at my gmail address

sp00ge1972

On this subject, a wingless Lightning seems to have randomly appeared in the carpark of an industrial unit of the A46, just North of M5 Jct 18. Quite took me by surprise on the old commute…

Thanks for that. I still think that the Russian Ekranoplans were some of the coolest cold war engineering projects.

A timely bump.

It might feature Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown with luck – flown more types of plane than anyone else in history. He lives at the back of my uncles house and regularly sets alight the trees with his bonfires!

For the real geeks amongst you… a fascinating history of banging out:

http://www.martin-baker.com/_pdfs/history_development_mk1-mk10_ejection_seats.pdf

I read earlier that the last flying electric lightning crashed at an airshow. Bit of a bummer that one.

It’s bods like Eric Winkle Brown that I think about whenever I feel like I’m about to grumble at on old boy pottering along the road or pavement in front of me. Don’t suppose I’d be too happy if he set my garden on fire though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Brown_%28pilot%29 – Quality stuff.

Here we go!

I’m quite excited!

*pulls up chair*

Kettle on…

RAF Tangmere (where the RAF High Speed Flight was based) – not much left, but a very fine museum there now. Well worth a visit if you are in the area

http://www.tangmere-museum.org.uk

Accuracy a bit dodgy

If anyone wants to get up close to these jets, and see,hear, and FEEL their thrust on take-off, then Bruntingthorpe airfield, Leics, has an open day this Sunday (26th Aug.), with fast taxi runs from amongst others, the Lightnings, Victor, Comet, Hunter.

http://www.lightnings.org.uk/

The noise is incredible, you have to be there to know how loud they are, it really does make you shake.

RAF Cosford is a good day out, National Cold War Exhibition is very good

https://plus.google.com/photos/100546096143152578024/albums/5765045954322837809
https://plus.google.com/photos/100546096143152578024/albums/5764722553144893761

And they have a TSR-2 🙂 !

Jesus, that Victor is something else. What an amazing looking machine.

BRILLIANT!

Still get a tear in my eye when I see the Harrier.