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Old 7th Aug 2020, 12:13 pm   #21
AC/HL
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Default Re: Aircrash 1968. Stockport.

Does anyone have anything to say about the reason for this thread being here, the avionics of the time?
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Old 7th Aug 2020, 1:16 pm   #22
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Default Re: Aircrash 1968. Stockport.

It was a mechanical fuel valve problem and lack of training in the consequences. The only electronic interest seems to be the recovery of a tape-based 'black box' and seeing it replayed onto a strip chart recorder.

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Old 7th Aug 2020, 1:29 pm   #23
barrymagrec
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Default Re: Aircrash 1968. Stockport.

Well, as I mention above my Dad worked for Royston Instruments at the time and I had a holiday job with the associated company Royston Engineering in 1966.

The crash recorder which is shown in the film used a short continuous loop of 1/2 inch long play 3M instrumentation tape and continuously recorded the last 20 minutes of the important control settings and possibly other things. The crash recorder was designed to survive impact and fire, some of them had explosive charges to eject them away from the crash site and further possible damage.

Royston were actually more interested in the flight data side of things which was also shown in the film.

The flight data recorder used 1/2 or 1 inch tape, 8 or 16 tracks. The purpose was to monitor the engine and other diagnostics so as to improve service interval accuracy and catch early failures before they happened.

The replay equipment for these tapes could run at various speeds depending on the requirement, the ones I saw (from a distance) used a 3 speed Croydon Synchronous capstan motor to facilitate the speed changes.

I can`t remember much more than that, it was 54 years ago - remember the Stockport crash but by the time of the Royston involvment was apprenticed at Bletchley so I don`t know if my Dad was involved - probably not much as he was their Chief Inspector (QA Manager these days) and not likely to be involved in investigation unless there had been equipment failure.

The Royston use of tape instead of wire was derided in some circles due to the relatively low Curie point of tape compared with wire but when a wire recorder (Plessey?) was involved in a crash fire the heat turned the spool into a large quantity of 2 inch lengths of brittle wire - took many months to sort out, I was told.
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Old 7th Aug 2020, 1:39 pm   #24
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Default Re: Aircrash 1968. Stockport.

I watched the documentary a few days ago when I first read this post and followed the link. I wouldn't have particularly gone looking for this sort of thing normally and would never have seen it if it hadn't been for this post and the link. I really enjoyed watching it and found it extremely interesting, pausing and replaying several parts of it on the way through.
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Old 7th Aug 2020, 2:34 pm   #25
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Default Re: Aircrash 1968. Stockport.

The mention of Royston group is intriguing: I've always been interested in the 'business' side of the electronics industry and Royston are a company about which very little seems to have been written/appears on the Internet, unlike, for example, Hartley's.
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Old 7th Aug 2020, 2:37 pm   #26
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Default Re: Aircrash 1968. Stockport.

I was living in High Lane village (A6 towards Buxton) at that time, and my Dad took me to see the wreckage.
Many years later I read the accident report whilst working at the RAE in Farnborough, It will be very interesting to watch the documentary.
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