Post by viscount on Dec 30, 2017 23:04:14 GMT 1
FAMILIES DAY: 1971, 1972 & 1973 plus FACTORY PHOTOS late '70s.
Original 2017 introduction: Having not posted an image on nwan for over 8 months since the Photobucket debacle, here is my (small) offering on this new section. However these images cannot be ranked as either my best, or well exposed. Indeed I reckon that the 1971 shots could have been taken with my first film through my first SLR with a new 400mm fixed focal length lens adjusting manually shutter speed and f number settings. On refreshing the images, 2024: While posting further Hawarden display images found this 2017 single post thread, which has been without images for a number of years. 2017-2024 had had 2,222 hits. I'll move and merge it into a newer thread covering the same period. So with a new photo host and images refreshed.[/i]
What can I offer in terms of images of Hawarden? Well disappointing little actually. In 45 years plus of photographs, thousands of images, I have just 10 taken at Hawarden!
Families Day, Saturday, 12th June 1971
DH.98 Mosquito T.3 RR299/G-ASKH HT:E was a favourite each year, always flown immaculately. Don't recall which years, maybe more late 60s than early 70s when it was flown between the Hangars to gasps of amazement! Such a shame that RR299 days ended so suddenly and fatally at Barton.
In the early 70s the flying display usually consisted of just a handful of aircraft. The home produced DH/HS/BAe.125 being an annual fixture. In 1971 it was a new aircraft, G-AYOJ a HS.125-400B C/no. 25246 in bare metal and primer.
Another near regular each year at the time was an HS.748 from Woodford. This is HS.748-2A demonstrator G-AYYJ being put through its paces, including a pass with the port (left) prop feathered.
Not a regular, but a delight in 1971 was the Blackburn B.2 G-AEBJ brought over from the HSA factory at Brough.
Families Day, Saturday 10th June 1972
Well a year of camera experience on, my setting of shutter f number and speed have improved, but I am still on blue cast, grainy Agfa film stock!
In 1972 Woodford sent across HS.748-2 G-ATAM, at that time a demonstrator between periods of use by potential or new customers
Why waste an opportunity for a further picture of that immaculate Mosquito? Have pushed the cropping of a small image perhaps a shade too far. The other shots I have generally left the width (for the background), just cropped sky and grass/tarmac, top and bottom.
Families Day, Saturday 9th June 1973
Just the one photo, but quite a decent one of HS.125-600A N28BH c/no. 26018, again only recently flown and yet to visit the paint shop.
FACTORY PHOTOGRAPHS
These publicity photos in the NWAN Collection were likely acquired at the time that the Aerospacelines Guppy first collected a set of A.300 wings at Liverpool in late 1979. Certainly, using the zoom facility on Picasa when digitising the image, one photo can be dated with certainty to early/mid 1979.
This is a slightly earlier shot. Certainly the print quality is different to the other two, while the organisation of wing jigs over to the left makes me suspect it is earlier rather than later.
The nearest aircraft is a -700A c/no 7058 produced mid 1979, so dates this photo to the first half of 1979. Surprisingly none of these three official looking publicity photos have any photographer, copyright or date stamp on the reverse.
The Airbus A.300 wing production lines within the main factory at a time when production rate was being ramped-up.
