Here’s another great British Beauty that unfortunately wasn’t quite as successful as it could have been.....(sigh, I swear I should have just made a should-have-been-great series!) And a beauty she is - up there with the other magnificent looking Britannia’s and viscounts. Stunning looks coupled with exceptional speed should have meant the Vanguard replaced the Viscount and was a bit of a market pleaser for the short to medium market but it never was to be sadly. Coming into service with big jets in the late 50s, the Vanguard was largely overlooked with only 44 being completed. With that said she was fast, and powerful! In fact one of the most powerful and fast turboprops ever - more so than the highly successful dash 8 or Saab 2000. Short hops in and around the 300-400 mile mark were not being beaten by the jets of the age and allegedly she could hold altitude at 10,000ft with one engine at max the rest feathered! Something the mighty C-130 (of original 50s spec) could not achieve being of comparable weight and power. Rather unfitting for such a bird most were converted to ‘cargoliners’ the last of which was retired in ‘96. Fast and beautiful this is the greatest turboprop that we never really had!

Destructions are simply VTOL down for flaps, 8 for lights! Some notes on bimbling around the sky - she requires a smidge of trim until at full speed. I’ve smuggled various power plants to achieve the performance and more importantly the noise of a turboprop but this has come with some drawbacks. When idling engines on landing/reducing speed, the turboprops I smuggled into the wing will over speed and blow up. To eliminate this just ‘blip’ the throttle a % or two till it gives you the safe rpm message and repeat when landing/slowing down. I thought maybe like the dash 8 the vanguard would have had a set of spoilers but for the life of me I could not find any evidence/pictures/videos of these so assumed this was controlled via pitch control - that distinct rise in noise as a turboprop slows down, but some pilots or better informed people will brief me otherwise! I laid off further detail such as panel lines purely as i got ahead of myself and got her flying nice and trim before finalising aesthetics. Once again thanks for downloading or sharing interest in what I feel is the greatest looking/performing turboprop ever!