Brooklands Trust Members Forum

The Last Helicopter ?

2010-08-16T21:18:03+00:00

This is scheduled to be the last helicopter landing on the helipad at Brooklands….unless an unplanned one comes in during the nexct couple of weeks !

It landed this morning where the lady pilot had a meeting with Julian Temple at the Museum. The end of an era.

Future landings are planned for the airstrip on Mercedes Benz World.

The helipad site is actually a huge rubbish dump which was levelled when the Museum came into existence to provide a suitable platform for helicopter landings. It is now due for complete demolition to bring the ground level back to it’s pre war level and the building of the Cobham London Transport Bus Museum.

You can read how that is going along in another thread under Brooklands Banter.

Oh and the airccraft is a Robinson R44 Raven II for those recording Brooklands history.

A bit of rearrangement

2010-06-29T23:03:26+00:00

It’s not often that the hanger gets rearranged. So here’s a couple of shots of just that very thing happening today. The main points being that teh Harrier has now gone to the back where the Hurricane used to eb and the Hurricane moved to the front. The idea being to keep the aircraft that run near the doors so they can be moved outside and fired up on appropriate occasions.

1) Crossed Tail Planes
2) Shifting the Harrier
3) Wide open spaces - the hanger gets a good sweeping courtesy of Kai
4) An aircraft park outside the clubhouse
5) The Hurricane finally sees the light of day again

Brooklands in the Arab News

2010-03-21T11:50:21+00:00

http://arabnews.com/lifestyle/art_culture/article31007.ece

Brooklands: The birthplace of British motorsport and aviation
By ROGER HARRISON | ARAB NEWS

Published: Mar 17, 2010 19:00 Updated: Mar 17, 2010 19:01

The rivets. They’re not right.” Jeremy Hall sighed resignedly, “Those rivets, they’re American.” He shook his head sadly at the enforced outrage with an air of professional resignation.

It was a movement honed to the point of an instinctive reaction by years of being presented with, as a UK customs officer, preposterous stories by nervous travelers who had been asked to open their suitcases.

Just fancy; American rivets on a Lancaster bomber he is in the process of restoring. The world had come to a pretty pass. We stood in companionable silence contemplating the offending rivets. They gleamed back at us smugly in the late afternoon sun at Brooklands Museum in Surrey.

The British do make singularly fine rivets. However, rivets seventy years old of the character and shape to match Hall’s meticulous restoration of the WWII bomber are not easy to come by. There are many old rivets in America. To suggest using modern British rivets would be to invite a basilisk stare from Hall that would freeze the life out of you. He must have been an exceedingly effective customs officer.

The British produce a distinguished line in eccentrics, the Brooklands Museum itself being the product of one, a motoring enthusiast Hugh Locke King. It is true to say that without the existence of Brooklands motor racing circuit, there would not have been a British racing presence which, over the decades, has contributed not just to the sport of auto racing, but to the development of automotive technology as we now take it for granted.

It is the genteel eccentricity of the museum that occupies some of the site of the original circuit however, that is so appealing. Even its foundation, which came about in the summer of 1906 at a particularly convivial dinner party Locke King held, was characteristically serendipitous. He “found” the story goes, after he had been told at a continental motor race meeting that British competitors stood no chance of winning anything, that he had volunteered to build at his own expense and on his own land the world’s first purpose-built motor-racing track.

With no motor racing experience to draw on the designer, one Colonel H.C.L. Holden of the Royal Artillery, used what he knew about — the principles and rules of horse-racing. The track itself incorporated banked curves and long and straight areas so that cars — or indeed horses — could be rigorously tested and achieve speeds well beyond road speeds.

The first official race opened on the £150,000 (SR 900,000) circuit on July 6, 1907 and was heralded by the motoring press as a ‘Motor Ascot’, a celebration of horsepower but without the horses. The world’s first 24 hour motor race took place there 11 days later and a couple of decades later the first and second British Grand Prix, founded by Henry Seagrave.

The rest is a rich 80-year history packed with names that have influenced not only the development of automobiles, engineering and racing but also the history of aviation. It even hosted the original “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” — well, four of them in fact. Chitty 4 sported a 450 hp (340 kW) V12 27 liter Liberty aero engine with a gearbox and chain-drive from a pre-war Blitzen Benz, it was the largest capacity racing car ever to run at Brooklands.

The heyday of the racing circuit was during the 1920s and 1930s when record times were being set and broken on a regular basis by Malcolm Campbell, John Cobb and others in such magnificently crafted machines as Napier, Delage, Panhard, Bentley and Bugatti. Some still sit in the small and friendly museum spaces. A magnificent polished aluminum Napier Railton — now there is a motoring legend — draws admiring, thoughtful observers. It still runs perfectly and is on occasions started and driven.

To the delight of generations of visitors, landspeed record holder Malcom Campell’s workshop and original shop is still there…..........................

Aviation played a seminal role in the development of Brooklands. 1908 saw the first taxiing and towed flight trials of a British full-size powered aircraft by a British pilot, Alliott Verdon-Roe- founder of Avro — as in Avro Lancaster bomber. During World War I, Brooklands closed to motor racing and was requisitioned by the War Office. Vickers Aviation Ltd. set up a factory in 1915, and Brooklands soon became a major center for the construction, testing and supply of military airplanes.

Mystery Powerplants

2010-01-18T15:36:54+00:00

Hi all, hope someone out there can help. Attached are three photographs illustrating what appear to be two engines of some sort. I’m guessing aero because of the apparent size and light weight. Any help at all with identification would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

The Killing of the TSR2

2010-01-06T11:04:18+00:00

As everyone is snowed it you might like to tune in to Radio 4 on Thursday (7th Jan) at 2,15pm for a Radio Play entitled the Killing of the TSR2.

Here’s the BBC blurb

“By Robin Brooks. The true story of the struggle to build TSR2, the British-built world-beating fighter jet that never was. Years ahead of its time technologically, it was scrapped by the Labour government in 1965, after just one supersonic test flight.”

More info at:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pl1gx

Wing Swap

2009-11-11T23:39:14+00:00

The RAF popped in today to claim the wing of the Kestrel/Harrier back. Luckily they brought another with them which was the correct wing for the aircraft to swap them over…..here’s a few pics of the wing swap.

Vimy arrival - TOMORROW, Sunday 15th November!

2009-11-14T12:02:23+00:00

Valerie from the Musuem has just asked me to post this to let you all know. The Vimy will be flying in tomorrow to take up residence at the Museum. Apologies for the lateness of the notification, but the descision was only taken late yesterday. No idea on the time yet, if I find out, I will let you know.

Amelia Earhart.

2009-11-21T21:37:23+00:00

Dear all,

Recently inherited “Soaring Wings” by Geoge Palmer Putnam. A biography of Ameila Earhart.

Amelia Earhart visited England. Did she come to Brooklands, does anyone know?

NickB

Air Strip Testing - this week

2009-10-09T12:23:18+00:00

The Museum is hoping to fly a Piper Cub into the new Air Strip at MBW in the next few days to test out its suitability for aircraft take off and landing. Hopefully this will herald the way for some fly ins next year ! So if you’re local keep an eye out for it.

Aircraft

2009-10-16T19:07:29+00:00

Hi there,

Visited Brooklands last week and was considering a club membership. While the vehicle collection is impeccable, I couldn’t help noticing that the aviation side looked a bit scruffy. Not only that, I cannot believe that you are restoring a Lanc (one of my favourite aircraft and one of your best exhibits), OUTSIDE????????? Sorry to sound negative but it seems to me that the museum has so much to offer, yet it lets itself down in on the aviation side.

Many Thanks

Mike & John Porter