Miss Shilling and her Orifice

Unfortunately but understandably, Brooklands was demolished during WWII as it stuck out like a sore thumb and would have made an ideal navigation reference point for German bombers.

Edited by Tim Murray, 20 July 2016 - 17:32.

I was on the net checking out the availability of Matthew Freudenberg's biography of Tilly Shilling when I came across the following interesting fact in a review of the book on this page:


How on earth did this strange fallacy originate?

Edited by Vitesse2, 10 October 2010 - 21:57.

I was on the net checking out the availability of Matthew Freudenberg's biography of Tilly Shilling when I came across the following interesting fact in a review of the book on this page:
Unfortunately but understandably, Brooklands was demolished during WWII as it stuck out like a sore thumb and would have made an ideal navigation reference point for German bombers.

How on earth did this strange fallacy originate?

Edited by Allan Lupton, 10 October 2010 - 22:59.

I've not (yet) seen the Freudenberg book, but I should guess that the Brooklands error was made by the American reviewer of the book and not Mr Freudenberg, who was listed in the review with a Somerset address, and who has also written a biography of motorcycle racer Les Graham.

Sorry but I've now looked at the review. He also makes points about Shilling's appearance that show he has no idea how RAE scientists/engineers, male or female, looked when they were working.
If it is the same Graham White, I had the job of consultant editor for the publishers of a book he wrote (published 1995) and he had ideas that did not tally with facts and refused to accept that they were in error, even when a detailed explanation was offered. However he did credit Shilling's work on the Merlin.

Tilley introduced the RAE restrictor which limited the flow through the carburettor to something just over maximum take-off demand and that improved things a lot.

She then introduced the 'Anti-G' version of the SU. Tilly did two things. She put a control on the setting of the float which limited the amount the needle valve came up when the float lost control, but also fitted an excrescence on the tip of the needle that acted like an RAE restrictor which cut off the flow under the negative G condition. There were also ball valves to stop the fuel flooding out of the carburettor through the air vents under negative G.

Thanks PP and Allan for helping to improve my understanding of all this. Back to blood pressure ...

When going into a steep dive, they used to flick inverted as they pushed the stick forward, and this meant that power was uninterrupted. 109's thought they could escape by diving out of an engagement, but quite a few were caught out by this dodge.

Edited by plannerpower, 12 October 2010 - 05:18.

It's my understanding that Rolls Royce knew a lot about fuel injection but, for reasons that I haven't been able to discover, they thought that carburetion was better when the supercharger was involved.

Edited by Tim Murray, 20 July 2016 - 18:48.
Edited to remove dead link

The reduction in temperature as the air passed through the carburettor venturi increased its density and thus mass flow rate, resulting in increased power.

As Tilly Naylor, Miss Shilling as-was was a decent racing driver, mostly after the war. The story goes that she refused to marry her husband until he proved himself by lapping Brooklands at 100mph.

Tim

Please keep prospecting in the much missed Blood Pressure thread, as you are aware the OP was DCN and its' demise was, in my view. somewhat unwarranted.

John

Tim

Please keep prospecting in the much missed Blood Pressure thread, as you are aware the OP was DCN and its' demise was, in my view. somewhat unwarranted.

John

There are several thousand posts in it ...

Roz to Frasier Crane, upset after his obituary had been published erroneously: "I don't think they meant to be insulting - you are lovably pompous!"

http://www.warhistor...aw-watch-x.html

Tim
Please keep prospecting in the much missed Blood Pressure thread, as you are aware the OP was DCN and its' demise was, in my view. somewhat unwarranted.
John

http://www.warhistor...aw-watch-x.html

Funny grasp of terminology with explanations like this:

A “negative g maneuver” is the technical term for plummeting faster than gravity can pull a plane down, causing those inside it to almost float.

and even in US English I think "dove" is a bird, not the past participle of "to dive"

Sorry, but the ghost of "Blood Pressure" Past seems to have appeared

... and even in US English I think "dove" is a bird, not the past participle of "to dive"

Sorry, but the ghost of "Blood Pressure" Past seems to have appeared

'Dove' is now more common in US and Canadian writing ...

http://grammarist.co...age/dove-dived/

'Dove' is now more common in US and Canadian writing ...

 

http://grammarist.co...age/dove-dived/

A word that particularly irritates me in this sort of context is "span" as the past participle of to spin. It's especially favoured by writers in the lesser tabloids. My dictionary tells me that this word is "archaic", so it's perhaps what Henry VIII might have said to describe a spinning aeroplane, had these been invented in his time.

A word that particularly irritates me in this sort of context is "span" as the past participle of to spin. It's especially favoured by writers in the lesser tabloids. My dictionary tells me that this word is "archaic", so it's perhaps what Henry VIII might have said to describe a spinning aeroplane, had these been invented in his time.

Ah but the meaning in archaic times wasn't to do with spinning, as in aeroplane terminology span is the distance from wingtip to wingtip

We did cover 'span v spun' a long time ago in the 'For Sure' thread. 'Twas DCN who first raised it, but see further contributions below from David McKinney, yours truly and ensign14.

http://forums.autosp...-2#entry2396962

This has given me a small insight to a question that intrigued me and was too lazy to ask. Making an engine work at all sorts of aerobatic work has scared me. How do carbys maintain fuel level upside down coupled with G force. How do they keep fuel at the tank pickup in the same scenario. 

Even a fuel injected engine in any form is still affected by gravity and getting fuel from the tank/s

How do oiling systems keel supplied with oil as well when flying upside down.  Yet alone looping. Or transmissions as well. And most had geared props.

And how do radial engines have oil drain back to collection in all of eg 14 cylinders. That just plodding along on the straight and level. One would have thought that the lower cylinders would be drowning and the uppers starving in that configuration. Getting pressurised oil to the areas is not the problem, getting it back to the tank/ tanks does seem to be a real problem too me. Yet radials are still used even now.

Edited by Jack-the-Lad, 09 December 2016 - 13:31.

From a 1943 Air Council publication;

What is the venue of that picture? It looks like someplace I'd like to be.

Edited by GreenMachine, 10 December 2016 - 00:58.

A word that particularly irritates me in this sort of context is "span" as the past participle of to spin. It's especially favoured by writers in the lesser tabloids. My dictionary tells me that this word is "archaic", so it's perhaps what Henry VIII might have said to describe a spinning aeroplane, had these been invented in his time.

Neither "span" or "spun" ever sounds right to me. "Spun" sounds like it should be a past participle.

There's always "rotated", I suppose. "Lotus managed to rotate at the Esses" has an interesting ring to it.

That's some real homespun wisdom there.

Whilst partaking of Mr Wetherspoon's finest fish and chips today, I leafed through the house magazine to find that Wetherspoons have a pub in Farnborough called 'The Tilly Shilling' and featuring various aeronautical memorabilia, including Spitfire control yokes as door handles.

Edited by BRG, 03 March 2017 - 20:55.

Whilst partaking of Mr Wetherspoon's finest fish and chips today, I leafed through the house magazine to find that Wetherspoons have a pub in Farnborough called 'The Tilly Shilling' and featuring various aeronautical memorabilia, including Spitfire control yokes as door handles.

Somebody on the board has his or her heart in the right place.

They do try to be locally relevant. The one near Coventry Transport Museum is called The Flying Standard and "is named after the fondly remembered motor car, part of a range of models made in Coventry from 1903 until the 1960s. Standard’s first car, the Motor Victoria, was built in 1903 by Reginald Maudslay, in Much Park Street. The Standard Nine was launched in 1927. Inexpensive, at £198, its success saw Standard through the ‘slump’ and it was still going strong when, in 1936, the Flying Standard models made their début."

The rather grotty one in Trowbridge is named after locally-born Sir Isaac Pitman, publisher and inventor of Pitman Shorthand. And when they opened in what used to be Whitehaven Bus Station, they named the pub The Bransty Arch - a local landmark which had been demolished to build the bus station in the 1920s - one of the reasons given being that it was impeding traffic, particularly buses!

Somebody on the board has his or her heart in the right place.

And also their orifice no doubt...

One Wetherspoons in Bournemouth is named The Christopher Creeke, "Who?" I hear you say. Well, Christopher Creeke was a local dignitary. He was also a surveyor, and in some part responsible for the layout of present day Bournemouth, which is a relatively young town in historical terms. A couple of hundred years ago, all that existed were a few small isolated villages and expanses of sand dunes. A statue was placed outside a local landmark in 1998, commemorating three local holders of the Victoria Cross and the town’s first surveyor, Christopher Crabb Creeke. He was also a sanitary engineer, a distinction he shares with Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman, whose certificate I've seen. With a spot of seaside postcard humour, the statue’s sculptor depicted Creeke sitting on a lavatory, stroking his beard, and exercising his orifice no doubt. It received a mixed reception from locals.

They do try to be locally relevant. The one near Coventry Transport Museum is called The Flying Standard and "is named after the fondly remembered motor car, part of a range of models made in Coventry from 1903 until the 1960s. 

Continuing OT at the slight risk of this thread developing into a "visit your local Wetherspoons" , and as an ex-Standard-Triumph employee (although I have yet to venture into The Flying Standard on Broadgate), the one in Barrow-in-Furness is an ex-Co-op building that is named The Furness Railway and displays appropriate memorabilia.    The FR became a constituent of the LMS at the Grouping in 1923 but is still acknowledged locally (although Barrow Council succeeded - where WW2 bombing failed - in demolishing the original company offices a few years ago).   An early engine, Furness Railway No.3 built in Liverpool in 1846 and known as Coppernob, was preserved by the original railway company in a glass roofed building at Barrow Station and is now kept (complete with WW2 shrapnel damage when a bomb hit the station) at the National Railway Museum in York.

Leyland Lion in ....

On Friday June 23rd at 19.30 BBC 1 is showing some regional programmes on inventions, each of them entitled 'Invented in ...' Miss Shilling's Orifice will be featured in the BBC North West one. Those of us not Oop North but with satellite can catch it live on Sky 958 or Freesat 955. Will also be on iPlayer afterwards, of course.

... Miss Shilling's Orifice will be featured in the BBC North West one.

There was a brief piece on BBC Breakfast, which is how I'm aware of it. The lady presenter, whose name I didn't note, is a Manchester University academic.

Warbirds Downunder, at Temora in 2011.

The long lens introduces a bit of foreshortening, it certainly wasn't as cozy as that suggests.

Other than being stinking hot, it was a great day!

ETA: Before moving it out on the runway for the demo flight, it was parked near the hangars, and offered some additional functionality - welcome shade, for those who got there first! OTOH, my partner got some aviation grade engine oil on her shirt while standing there ...

The Temora Crew put on a fabulous show!!!

The lady presenter, whose name I didn't note, is a Manchester University academic.

... Professor Danielle George goes on a mission of discovery to uncover the unsung inventors of the north west who changed the world ...

Miss Shilling was the subject of a bonus round on tonight's University Challenge final. Perhaps for reasons of propriety her invention - although mentioned - was not referred to as her orifice!