Shot down by a Nieup last week!

[Vigilant]

Just to say "thanks" to occassional forumite Bob Gauld-Galliers for showing me over his Nieuport 17/23 replica last week. We share the same airfield but had not met until then. Not only did I get to look round the beautiful thing and check out the view from the cockpit, but Bob then came up to buzz my mate and me as we pottered around in an AX-3 microlight.

A private aerial airshow basically - Bob's wing-overs looked particularly impressive - but we were dead meat countless times! We would have stood more chance in a Farman Shorthorn.



Sorry for not thanking you earlier, Bob, but I had a severe dose of exams all last week.
Thanks again, it was fab!

Vigilant

PS - Merry Christmas to all at the Aerodrome.

[mike_baram]

Lawdy, Lawdy, what a sweet lookin' machine!

Vigilant,

Nice photograph and it was my pleasure ol bean.

I'm glad you and Mark enjoyed the:- "Being bounced by a Nieuport 17 experiance", and what a bonus, I bounced you first and not that other AX-3 1/2 a mile to the South!

Hope the exams went well.

Bob G-G. (Merry Christmas all)

[leo]

Super job on the Nieuport! Wow! Where is it?

leo

[mike_baram]

Leo,
If you put your pointer over the pic, you get a message that it was taken in Popham, Hampshire (England).
Mike

Brad,

The Nieuport 17. B3459 is a full-size Repro in the markings of Captain P F Fullard of No 1 Squadron RFC. He was credited 42 victories over a mere five months of operation, seventeen of them in his Nieuport 17 B3459.
John Day my co-builder and I started the project in 1992 and she first flew in 1997.
We used Redfern and Rozendaal (the later, German drawings of a captured machine).



'The office'

For detail we spent some time at the Brussels Army museum, Belgium, measuring and photographing the only surviving genuine Nie.17. That like B3459 is actually a Nie.23, a later sub-type which differed from the better known Nie.17 only in the position of the Vickers gun on the upper fuselage. The RFC removed the Vickers completely in favour of a wing mounted Lewis on a Foster mount, so the model difference was irrelevant.



'Engine & cheek cowlings removed'.

We thought about fitting a rotary engine, and knew of two up for sale, but rotarys have a short life and you have to aquire a permit every time you fly other than local. So proudly sitting up front is a radial 'Warner Super Scarab' engine. The Scarab nominally develops 165 hp at 2,250 rpm, but the big mahogany propeller limits its rpm to 1,800. So on take-off it only produces about 120 hp, similar to the Le Rhone or Clerget rotaries. The Scarab sounds lovely and so it should do, slurping up 7 Imperial gallons an hour.

Performance: Cruise speed 95 mph. Stall 52 mph. Range 173 miles. S/L climb rate 800 fpm. Service ceiling 18,000 ft. Take-off distance 350 ft. Landing distance 250 ft.
The historical details are on my web page:

http://website.lineone.net/~r.gaugall/

Regards,

Bob G-G.

[Barrett]

Now THESE GUYS take their WW I aero history seriously. Congrats all round!
Walt Redfern would be pleased to know that his work is still being used. He was a great guy.