Classic Arms & Militaria 02-03/2014

The widespread adoption of firearms which used metallic cased cartridges from about 1870 onwards created a requirement for inert cartridges to teach the soldier how to manipulate his weapon. This became increasingly important with die advent of magazine rifles. The only way that an instructor could be sure that his pupils had assimilated the lesson was to see them conduct a successful loading and firing cycle with inert ammunition. During the muzzle-loading era, the lack of dummy ammunition was not an issue. Loading drill could be conducted without it and lightly charged blank or "blunt" cartridges could be used when necessary to give the soldier a better impression of his firearm's function. As firearms grew more technically complex, armourers and other artificers needed inert ammunition to check functionality and wear. Consequently, a new type of inert ammunition the Drill or Dummy cartridge began to appear. In 1871 die famous Scottish gunmaker Alexander Henry advocated a dummy cartridge for use in the .577 Snider rifle. The main part of the case and the tapered "bullet" were made from turned boxwood. The head was brass and the "primer" was an India-rubber plug designed to absorb die impact of the striker. Mr Henry patented his design (No. 3257/1870) and promoted it vigorously amongst die Volunteer Movement. He claimed that soldiers could "..make constant HOME PRACTICE without danger, expense or injury to the rifle and the manipulation is a perfect as though using live cartridges". Henry's dummy cartridges cost 2 shillings and 6 pence for 10 or 100 might be had for a guinea including rail delivery. Specimens are rare today.

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Classic Arms & Militaria 01/2014

Early firearms were invariably smooth-bore weapons because, initially, no one understood that putting grooves in the barrel of a gun to make the ball spin would increase its accuracy Even after this discovery was made, a rifled barrel was not very easy to make by hand and it was not until the beginning of the 16th century that rifled weapons began to appear regularly in Europe. These first rifles were of either Austrian or German manufacture and although they were accurate and popular with the sporting shooter, they never gained general acceptance by the military. The problem was loading. If the designer increased the size of the ball so that it was a tight fit in the bore, forcing the ball down the barrel past the rifling made it difficult to load and, if the ball was looser, the accuracy of the weapon was reduced to barely that of an equivalent musket. Very-early rifle shooters used a wooden mallet to knock the ball down the rifling, but this was not totally-satisfactory and rifles did not become really popular until their loading problems were partially overcome by the development of a process called 'patch-loading'. This involved the use of a patch of paper, cloth or even leather which was wrapped around the ball before it was inserted into the barrel and forced down to seat on to the charge. The patch gripped the grooves in the barrel sufficiently to impart the required spin to the ball and so rendered the rifling effective.

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Aero Modeller March/April 2014

One of the special appeals of competition free-flight is that it's a purely objective sport, with simply a stopwatch to decide the result, rather than the subjective opinion of some judge. It's also a man (or woman) versus the elements. You, the flyer, will have pre-adjustcd several factors on the model that determine the flight (CG position, tailplane incidence for power or tow and for glide, rudder setting, differential wing incidence, propeller variable pitch changes,) and several of these maybe timer-controlled in flight. But in the end it is you who decides when to launch and that is when the elements bit comes into play. That model is going to end up somewhere downwind and you're going to need it back for several more rounds. Deciding when to launch usually means judging the air (temperature, wind speed and direction,) with the aim of finding a thermal to boost the flight performance to provide a max. When the model DTs (you did start the timer or set the fuse...?) is when the first stage of the retrieval phase begins. However, there's a lot you can do long before you get to the flying field that will help you to go home with the same number of models you set out with.

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Aviation News 03/2014

With the successful conclusion of Operation Corporate, the campaign to retake the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982, the RAF found itself faced with supporting a large UK military presence 8,500 miles (13,680km) from home. It had no strategic transport aircraft and its air-to-air refuelling (AAR) tanker fleet was, inevitably, going to be overstretched. An ongoing programme of Vickers VC10 tanker conversions would help, but much of the life of its existing Handley Page Victor tankers had been consumed during Corporate. The RAF therefore had an urgent requirement for a large tanker/transport and British Airways (BA) was identified as having a suitable aircraft available. Six long-range Lockheed L-1011 TriStar 500 trijets had been ordered in August 1976, with the first placed in service during January 1979 and the last in May 1981. The new aircraft performed admirably on the carrier's long, thin routes (long haul, with passenger volumes insufficient for cost-effective service with larger aircraft), but proved somewhat costly to operate. Struggling to raise cash during a period of recession, BA took the opportunity to sell its nearly-new TriStar 500 fleet to the RAF. A deal was struck later in 1982 and a period of transition followed. The first to be transferred, G-BFCF was withdrawn from commercial service in December and by the following March all six had ceased scheduled flying. However three made temporary returns to BA service.

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