(294) Scramble!

I had to go back to Telford today for a follow-up ENT appointment at the Princess Royal Hospital. I was only there for an hour so had plenty of time to head along to the RAF Cosford museum for a couple of hours. The collection is a good deal more extensive than I realised so I had to skip past a few exhibits with just a quick glance in order to have time to spend looking at aircraft I'd either never set eyes on before 'in the metal' or aircraft I'd only ever seen from a distance. The BAC TSR-2 falls into the former category and I was surprised at just how big the airframe is. The first extra shows the lines of the forward fuselage and wing arrangement. The second extra is a shot of the avionics bay that sits behind the cockpit, and houses, what was then state-of-the-art, electronic equipment for navigation and flight control. The weight, in imperial pounds, is marked on each separate unit and I reckon the total weight of the gear is somewhere approaching 200kg? I'd imagine that much of this equipment would now be contained on a collection of PCBs, at fraction of the weight and, probably, offering greater performance, by many orders of magnitude? The main blip is a typical view from the museum, showing multiple aircraft arranged in 'aerial' displays. Many (many) years ago I used to enjoy building plastic model kits, mainly of aircraft, and while walking around the museum hangars I found myself thinking about revisiting the hobby. Hmmmm, watch this space............