SLOPING OFF...

...the Newsletter of Christchurch and District Model Flying Club for March 2021

The Saunders-Roe “Squirt”, a chat started by David “Hello Longhamistas” Bintcliffe

Club members keep posting pictures of obscure waterplanes saying things like “This would be good at Longham”, to which the answer is usually “Yeah...the other one’s got bells on”. This one however...The Squirt was in fact the Saunders-Roe (see the hyphen? Think Christmas Quiz!) A/1 with two Metrovic Beryls providing the power. It was quite a large aircraft, span about 50’, a single seater and in fact the first jet-powered waterplane in the World. There were three prototypes, but interest in the concept soon waned and there was no further development. It was also the first aircraft to have Martin Baker ejection seats.

The balsa model in the picture is a build of the Jetex kit and it can be seen at the Solent Sky Museum.

Brian Jacksone commented on David’s email “Hello David, didn’t remember there was a Jetex version of the A1. Could you fit a 50mm EDF into it? Once I was tempted to buy a short kit from Sarik, but the prohibitive cost of two 55mm EDF units made me forget the project before it started. As a bewildered young apprentice, I worked on the A1. I stripped and refurbished one of its bilge pumps, wish I’d been able to photograph it.

The first time I saw the A1 in flight was when it was being flown inverted up the length of York Avenue in East Cowes. The pilot was Geoffrey Tyson, the aeroplane was very low indeed, and I think there was some sort of mild reprimand after the event. My last memory of the A1 was working on the extension to the air intake, it was intended to stop salt spray getting in and spoiling things. Never knew whether it worked. (but in a quote from the Wiki entry on the aircraft “The air intake for the engines was extendable to minimise the ingestion  of seawater during takeoffs, although testing revealed only minor  performance decreases due to this factor.” - So well done Brian!)

David replied “Peter Hudson was in touch with a Scottish aero modeller who had purchased from a chap in the Midlands a large model of this plane with a (one or two) turbojets in it ....god help him if he allowed it to take a gulp of salt water...

and this was followed by Peter Hudson...”David,my Scottish buyer,Dougie (almost certainly Dougie Eustace, the Cava designer - Ed) who bought my Cessna Skywagon,and at the same time bought a SR A/I in Cheshire has yet to pick up both planes,Covid stopped a holiday last June to Scotland when i was due to meet Doug with my Cessna! Last time i heard from him was that he was going to pick up both planes by courier service.but nothing for a few months.He flies large IC seaplanes off the lochs,his collection of planes is quite large,i saw a rather nice Schneider racer of his from a photograph.