FLIGHT

STRAIGHT&LEVEL
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Iconic Cold War
engine for sale
Thanks to a lucky reprieve by a
scrap metal merchant some 45
years ago, you can now buy the
prototype of one of the most
illustrious jet engines in British
aviation history on eBay. That
is, if you can spare $165,000.
That’s the minimum price set
by Jet Art Aviation for a truly
rare artefact – the original
prototype of the Bristol
Siddeley Olympus 22R Mk.320,
which powered the short-lived
British Aircraft Corporation
TSR2 and was the forerunner of
the engine that propelled the
supersonic Concorde.
Chris Wilson, managing
director of Jet Art, says the
engine was rediscovered sitting
on a farm in England. The
owner had run a scrapping
business in the 1960s, and was
given a load of several engines
to grind into recycled metal, a
task he fortunately decided
didn’t deserve his usual
diligence. “He said, ‘I’m going to
keep one,’” Wilson notes.
By luck, the scrapper
happened to pick the TSR2’s
prototype engine, serial number
1, to spare from the grinder.
The discovery of such a rare
find raised questions about how
to price it. Jet Art’s insurance
firm refused to set a value on it,
Wilson says, arguing the object
is, by definition, “irreplaceable”.
Perhaps fittingly, Wilson
established the price based on
its scrap value.
The Olympus prototype fits
42 | Flight International | 19-25 February 2013
into a niche market for rare
aviation objects. Asked who
would be a likely buyer,
Wilson says it is “more likely
private individuals”.
“It’s an investment really for
somebody,” he adds. “Items like
this generally go up in value.
Money is probably safer in a rare
jet engine than a bank.”
Nose for it
After 5,000 flights, Rockwell
Collins has donated its North
American Sabreliner 50 test
aircraft to Oregon’s Evergreen
Aviation & Space Museum. The
1964 twinjet (N50CR), was
bought by Collins in 1976 and
used to test many avionics
programmes over the years.
Among the distinctive
Forerunner of the Concorde engine can be yours for $165,000
“Being stuck back here in dromedary class is really giving
me the hump.” Our sympathies for the chap with the bucket
and mop at the end of this Il-76 flight
Jet Art Aviation
Sabreliner: avionics pioneer
features added by Rockwell
Collins is a large nose radome to
house airborne weather radar.
Not plane sailing
Boeing isn’t the only airframer
plagued by a grounding
problem, after the ship which
conveys Airbus A380 wings
from the UK to France slipped
her lines on 30 January.
Calls about the Ciudad de
Cadiz prompted an enigmatic
admission, in Toulousian
yuckspeak, that there was an
“issue about its sailability” – to
do with the fact that the water
holding her up had clocked off
from buoyancy duty leaving her
perched on a sandbank.
This handed Airbus a
problem of the utmost gravity.
The gravity in question being
the stuff which governs the tides
and is one of the few things that
Airbus can’t deliver on demand.
So it’s had to bow to the lunar
cycle and wait for high water to
sort things out.
Eduard Onischenko/Russianplanes.net
Rockwell Collins
Time is at hand
Other nations have realised
that the time is at hand. Is it
not well that we,
“a Great Power”,
should at least be
equally to the
fore. The present international
tension is no laughing matter,
and compared with Germany
and France our aerial fleet
simply does not exist.
Two-seater fighter
The United States adopted
the two-seater fighter at about
the same time
Great Britain took
up the Demon,
standardising on
a Berliner-Joyce biplane with a
Curtiss Conqueror engine and
gull-type wings. This was
superseded by the
Consolidated P-30.
Meteor detection
NASA will negotiate with
Fairchild Stratos, of
Hagerstown,
Maryland on a
contract to build a
large meteoroid
detection satellite for launch
late next year. Two of these
4,000lb satellites (for which
no designation has been
published) will be launched on
the eighth and ninth test
flights of the Saturn I.
Chemical damage
The NTSB says an illegal,
mislabelled shipment was
responsible for the
emergency landing
and evacuation of
an American
Airlines flight at Nashville.
Leakage of hydrogen peroxide
and sodium hydroxide caused
extensive damage to the floor
and sub-floor of the MD-80’s
passenger cabin.
100-YEAR ARCHIVE
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from 1909 onwards
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