civil aviation

One UK aircraft has been around me more than any other, and no, its not my beloved TSR2, AVS or Boeing SST. It is the VC 10 My Dad made me the Airfix kit. Until recently and from the age of 9 I could watch these elegant planes in their smart RAF colours doing circuits in and out of Brize...

From L+K 1/1969, here is a single seat low-wing light aircraft Project,designed by Mr. Vlada Verner from Czech (as I think) and it was called W-1,it was mentioned in JAWA 1972/1973,but I am not sure if it was a Project or not.

In the very first Thnunderbirds Episode "Trapped in the Sky" the London Airport building features the letters BAOC (based on the British Airways predecessor BOAC) as a rival to the Air Terrainean company who flew the Fireflash. As a BOAC fan I always hoped to see the BAOC version. So 50 years...

The Thunderbirds series from the 1960s featured in its first episode a wonderful airliner called Fireflash, which was totally improbable but looked very cool. In the series it crops up in a few episodes in the livery of "Air Terrainean", a sort of mixture of Pan American and BOAC. However, in...

In the late 60s the Germans were looking for a replacement for its ground attack Fiat G 91s. As an offset against costs for BAOR and RAF Germany the UK succeeds in selling Harriers to the Bundeswehr and getting Dornier involved in its production and a joint trainer which becomes the Hawk. HS and...

Last night I was on board an 8 year old British Airways A320 from Berlin to London. For a half an hour after take off the route map screen showed us zigzagging round Berlin until the pilot told us that because some hydraulic equipment had failed he was returning to Berlin. We landed and the...

Sad news: http://aviationweek.com/commercial-aviation/joe-sutter-father-747-dies-95 I was just watching him in this BBC documentary a few days ago: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03wtnfv/jumbo-the-plane-that-changed-the-world A great loss - the designer of an iconic aircraft.

Hi, http://archive.aviationweek.com/issue/19441009#!&pid=1 http://archive.aviationweek.com/issue/19441009#!&pid=48

Hi! Aichi AB-1(Aichi Biplane-1)civil transport and her competitor Mitsubishi MC-1, Nakajima N-36. The Ministry of Communications Civil Aviation Bureau invited the prize design of the pure domestic transport plane which will convey cargo with a passenger in 1925. This was a transport plane...

http://youtu.be/-idcnKx3PQo http://youtu.be/MGQ-7TtM4Kg The Shanghai Y-10, the Chinese attempt to copy the Boeing 707. Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/23269353@N00/5288276795/in/photostream/

Hi, here is the early drawing to De Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver with Gipsy Queen engine. Jet & Prop 5/1995

Originally designed by John Britten as long ago as 1977, construction of one prototype commenced but was abandoned at some stage in late 1982 or early 1983. The comment in Flight in 1980 about labour costs being projected as the major component of the planned £35,000 price explains the...

Hi, The Columbia Aircraft Corporation and the designers,Edmund Changiard and Alexander Kartveli created the Uncle Sam,it was a transoceanic transport all metal aircraft,with cantilever wing looks like a blended wing,and powered by three engines,all details are in Les Ailes journal and in...

Ever since 1911, Glenn H. Curtiss constantly dreamed of an airplane which would become a "family car of the air". His last efforts in this direction was a "flying wing" biplane with a pusher propeller, the configuration of which was very much like that of the Dunne D.8 of 1911. The similarity...

Just to complete the B-70 excursus. Ciao Giuseppe

Found this British aircraft of the 1930s and have no idea if it was actually produced, or if the Navarro company did anything else. Here are excerpts from the 1931 brochure... Has anyone heard of Navarro before? Other pics would be greatly appreciated! THE NAVARRO "CHIEF" THREE SEATER SALOON...

This sounds like a fascinating series of competitions (with more than fifty registrants and twenty flying prototypes in some years). I'm quite curious to no more about it. I've found references (and photos) of a few individual contenders - but trying to figure out what the designers were...

Came across this old NTIS translation of a Soviet pamphlet written by an A. F. Aksenov: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/783051.pdf

Hi, the Ben-Air Sparrowhawk was a side-by-side two seat high wing lightweight aircraft project,had been designed by a team of former British Aerospace (BAe) and Britten-Norman designers,powered by only single 32 hp two cylinder engine...

Model of Boeing 7-7 150-seat airliner press photo circa 1981 found on eBay. Source: http://www.ebay.com/itm/1981-Boeing-7-7-150-Seat-Aircraft-Design-Press-Photo-/190704400001?pt=Art_Photo_Images&hash=item2c66de3681