East Midlands LAA Strut Feb 2025 Meeting

[TRAZZELL]

Hi everyone,

The next meeting of the East Midlands LAA Strut will be from 7:30pm on the 4th Feb. As mentioned for last month's meeting, we will have to have the 4th February meeting on Zoom due to The Plough being closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. 

Martin Jones has kindly offered the talk that he recorded for the 2023 Royal Aeronautical Society Light Aircraft Design Conference about the DH88 Comet and the restoration of Black Magic. My plan is to play the video and then Martin will answer questions, which is how it worked at the conference. Black Magic has made some progress since the talk was first put together so we'll try to give a bit of an update as well. At a later Strut meeting, we may be able to host the meeting at Derby Airfield so that you can see the aircraft for yourself.

So for the 4th Feb, meeting on Zoom using the usual link as follows:

Topic: East Midlands LAA Strut Zoom link
Time: This is a recurring meeting Meet anytime
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89351024107?p ... s4eDhZdz09

Meeting ID: 893 5102 4107
Passcode: 251605

For next month, all being well, we will be back at The Plough, Normanton on Soar for a talk by Geoffrey New about his restoration of the Avro 504L on the 4th March. This historic aircraft was found abandoned in Sweden some years ago, having been used for passenger carrying duties so is in effect one of the first airliners (albeit small!). Geoffrey has indicated that he'd like to come up to the Midlands and present in person, and intends to bring some Avro parts for a "show and tell" so I would therefore encourage as many of you as possible to be at The Plough in person.

For the 1st April meeting, I have Mike Roberts lined up to do a talk about aircraft design, again he is hoping to travel up to be with us in person. You may have seen a series of articles that Mike wrote in Light Aviation about the principles of light aircraft design and he has spent time as an Engineer at LAA HQ.

On the 6th May I would like to have the East Midlands LAA Strut AGM so please consider whether you might be able to lend a hand with running the Strut, and bring some fresh ideas (I'll find something suitable for entertainment as well!)

I have been in touch with Dr Bill Brooks who is the engineering brains behind the Axe eVTOL aircraft. The Axe has now started flight trials so Bill is a bit busy right now, but we hope to get him to give us a talk in the autumn, perhaps for the 7th October.

As ever, any ideas for talks, speakers or volunteers to talk to your fellow Strut members are always welcome - just drop me an email ([email protected]) with the details.

Tony Razzell

East Midlands LAA Strut Coordinator