The fastest ever ambulance....

[Rheged]

Ooops, by adding the small tanks I've screwed up carrying any missiles.

For extra capacity, the tanks could be swapped for Bell 47 M*A*S*H style stretcher pods.

Tail gun for ambulance chasers???

It will be a remarkably rapid ambulance chaser if it can get anywhere near an NHS Lightning!!

[PR19_Kit]

I'll be lucky if this gets finished! 

Lightning main landing gear has always been a pain to  assemble, no matter who the manufacturer is, because the legs twist as they retract so the whole thing is at an angle to the straight ahead. Getting that angle right isn't that easy and it's worse when you have to use superglue to assemble it all because there's twenty umpteen layers of paint on the bits already.

The port leg and wheel went on fine, the starboard one was a right B*****D and kept on falling off, gluing itself at the WRONG angle etc. etc.

I've half a mind to forget the gear and glue the extra closed doors in place and put it on a stand, but that would take longer and I don't have the time.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr........................ 

[PR19_Kit]

So when I'd jigged up the port leg with Blu-Tak while the superglue was setting, the model fell off the table and broke off the nose leg, the port tank, the port patient bay door AND both small tanks!!!! 

If there's one thing I REALLY hate it's having to repair a model before I've finished building it!

Now it's all jigged with Blu-Tak while they're ALL setting................

[Mossie]

Hope you save it Kit. 

It will be a remarkably rapid ambulance chaser if it can get anywhere near an NHS Lightning!!

They're remarkably tenacious b*ggers...  There's an idea, a Starfighter in insurance company markings.

[PR19_Kit]

At LAST I've got all the bits glued firmly in place. 

Final detail painting and decaling tomorrow and that will be that, with luck. 

[Mossie]

Glad to hear it Kit!

[Old Wombat]

 

[zenrat]

Ooops, by adding the small tanks I've screwed up carrying any missiles.

For extra capacity, the tanks could be swapped for Bell 47 M*A*S*H style stretcher pods.

Tail gun for ambulance chasers???

It will be a remarkably rapid ambulance chaser if it can get anywhere near an NHS Lightning!!

Snatchpot, Cutpurse, and Pincher, Solicitors at law equipped their civil litigation division with MiG 25s.  Lightnings, even with two engines didn't stand a chance.

[Rheged]

Ooops, by adding the small tanks I've screwed up carrying any missiles.

For extra capacity, the tanks could be swapped for Bell 47 M*A*S*H style stretcher pods.

Tail gun for ambulance chasers???

It will be a remarkably rapid ambulance chaser if it can get anywhere near an NHS Lightning!!

Snatchpot, Cutpurse, and Pincher, Solicitors at law equipped their civil litigation division with MiG 25s.  Lightnings, even with two engines didn't stand a chance.

Joking aside, there genuinely was a solicitor's office in Stirling  (admittedly many years ago) with the brass plate declaring "Welch and Robb, Solicitors".......I have a photo of it somewhere.

[NARSES2]

Glad you managed to save it Kit 

[PR19_Kit]

Me too, it's all been detail painted now, and I just have some decals to apply to the big tanks, and give it a coat of Klear, and it'll be done. 

When I get home on Thursday I'm going to swap all the landing gear for some white metal bits as it's very stalky and fragile as it is.

[PR19_Kit]

The extraordinary tale of the Lightning C10
                                   
With the Tornado F3s planned takeover the air defence tasks from the RAF's Phantoms in the late 1980s, the Binbrook based Lightning Training Flight was about to be wound down until a small change in MoD policy came about.

Concerned about the prospects of a 'limited' ground war with the Eastern Bloc in Western Germany, it was decided that some means of getting the critically wounded quickly back to a safe medical environment was needed, and thoughts were given to a suitable high speed transport for this purpose. The Lightning would have seemed to be a most unlikely candidate for this until one of BAe's performance engineers mentioned that a Lightning could still exceed 1000 kts on only one engine, although this would be at the expense of some of its outstanding climb and altitude performance and would take a little while.

Accordingly an F6 Lightning was flown to Warton and the upper engine removed enabling space to be cleared in that area for two stretcher patients, with added pressurisation and air conditioning systems. The upper fuselage panels were arranged to split down the centre line and could be opened to enable the patients to be lowered into the stretcher bay, and these panels had portholes fitted as well. This was reckoned to improve the patient's state of mind while in transit, not to give them an extensive view of the rapidly passing outside world! Tests carried out with instrumented dummies proved that the arrangement would actually work and would not subject the 'passenger load' to high G forces so long as the aircraft's climb and turn rate was limited. Later some volunteers from the Aeromedical Centre at RAE Farnborough also took part in trials and deemed that the system worked fine so long as the flight duration was limited.

The intended destination in the UK was the Princess Alexandria Hospital based at RAF Wroughton near Swindon, and this was only some 500 miles distance from the most likely departure point of RAF Gutersloh, near to the Inner German border. Wroughton had a runway long enough to take the Lightning's 200 kt landing speed and further tests were carried out to prove this worked, and were successful. As a result a number of F6 airframes were converted into the casualty evacuation role, these numbers were estimated to be between 10 and 12, and these aircraft were designated the Lightning C10, and were operated by 24 Squadron, then being part of the transport element of Strike Command.

The C10s never had to use their unusual capabilities as the Cold War fizzled out very soon after they came into service but the MoD were reluctant to lose their unique capability and kept them on strength as 507 (County of Wiltshire) Reserve Squadron, using a unit allocation that had been posted during WWII but never used. Later work at RAE Boscombe Down and Farnborough developed a unique method of delivering the patients to hospitals without the lengthy runways enjoyed by RAF Wroughton, as most hospitals had no runways at all, though many had helipads. This involved using the now empty jetpipe tube for the nonexistent upper engine as an exit port, and for the patients to be gently ejected along the port attached to a large dual steerable parachute system fitted with the recently developed GPS navigation system. This enabled the patients to be dropped over the helipads and the parachutes steered to lower them softly and accurately to earth, cushioned by shock pads on the underside of the stretchers. During these ejections the one remaining engine of the C10 would be closed to idling, but the exposure time of the patients to any excess heat was only in milliseconds and this was deemed to be acceptable by the medical authorities.





Yet again the C10's capabilities were not to be used in any practical way, although demonstrations of the patient ejection technique were given during a number of RIAT air displays, but using dummy patients. Toward the end of the 90s the C10s were getting long in the tooth and rather difficult to maintain due to maintenance staff familiar with the Lightning retiring and not available to pass their knowledge on, but the aircraft had very few flying hours on their books, and as all the C10s had been 'zero houred' during their rebuilds they still had long fatigue lives left.

Six of the C10s, the ones with the best reliability record and with the lowest hours, were offered to the NHS as high speed casualty recovery aircraft, and these were accepted as the NHS had been an integral part of the patient drop trials and they could see the value in such a vehicle. All six had their military equipment removed, although the capability to carry the over wing long range tanks and the IFR probe were retained as this would enable the C10s to cover the entire UK without refuelling, or even to perform overseas recoveries with the aid of the RAF's tanker force. In addition some smaller tanks could be carried on the now redundant missile pylons on the forward fuselage. The C10s were located at six major airfields around the country, most being of necessity RAF airfields due to the need for high quality fuel for the thirsty Avon 301s, and the need for a lengthy runway, these being Lossiemouth, Valley, St. Mawgan, Odiham, Marham and Leeming.





As civilian aircraft all six had civvie registrations, the initial aircraft being G-FAST, the others being G-KWIK, G-RUSH, G-HURY, G-DASH and in honour of the well known TV series, G-MASH, and all were finished in a typical ambulance related colour scheme, being overall yellow with yellow and green 'Battenburg' checks along each side and on the wings. The large red crosses carried during the RAF service were retained as well as various NHS logos. The aircrew recruited by the NHS were of necessity ex-RAF Lightning pilots and the posts were heavily over-subscribed when they were advertised, and retired Lightning conversant ground crew were also recruited to keep the C10s well maintained.



The Rapid Response Ambulance Flight (RRAF), as the unit was known, became quite well known, frequently appearing on TV news broadcasts and their crews became social media heroes in many ways. In their later years the C10s became difficult to maintain due to the lack of spares, but a few of the RAF's gate guardians and museum residents swapped their lower time components for those time expired items from the C10s. But the world's fastest ambulances finally ran out of hours in the early 2000s and their replacements, conventional helicopters, really couldn't reproduce their performance figures, but they did perhaps treat their 'passengers' somewhat more gently....



=============================================

Having finished the build, of COURSE I knocked the nose probe off, as I've done with every Lightning I've ever built! 

Airfix, and everyone else who does Lightning kits, should supply them as metal rods or tubes, they're far too fragile in the position that they occupy. This one will have a hypodermic  needle replacing the kit probe when I get home. I've Photoshoped it in place in a few of the pics.

Things to note not mentioned in the backstory are the two blue lights, naturally, one on top of the fuselage and one underneath. Sirens were not considered to be necessary............ 

[Rheged]

Magnificent!!

[Old Wombat]

 

[Steel Penguin]

excellent model and backstory kit      and I do believe I shall add
Im sorry I cant hear you over the sound of how awesome that is