- photo: Mike Buck
  
Bill Henderson is the rider on the right of this starting line-up at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, circa 1950. Next to him is Peter (Ike) Hutton who went on to be a notable aerodynamist.

When Bill first sent us the photos now in the Back Room, he mentioned that the 1952 Wakefield used the Vindskreenviper wing. However, seeing the two pictures side by side, as we've displayed them, came to him, in his words, as "a real 'wake-up' call." He goes on:

"I had never put the Vindskreenviper and the Wakefield photograph together [...] and a problem leapt out of the page at me. Vindskreenviper has straight tips and the Wakefield has tapered tips. The Wakefield is NOT using the Vindskreenviper wing!

"This caused me to go back into my notes, because I distinctly remember using the Vindskreenviper wing and stab on my 1952 Wakefield. My notes indicate the Mark 1 version of the 1952 Wakefield did use the Vindskreenviper wing and stab, which I had repaired after the major crash at Fairlop in 1951. But the real clincher is that this Wakefield was lost OOS and still going up at the Southern Area Rally in March 1952 and was never returned. The worst part of it is that I have a ¾ front view of this model taking off, but it is impossible to see the wing shape.

"The reason I used the Vindskreenviper wing and stab was to quickly put together a Wakefield for the beginning of the 1952 season. The areas of the Vindskreenviper wing and stab were 209 and 76.5 square ins. giving a total of 285.5 square ins. The Wakefield rules, current at that time, were that the total area was to be between 263.5 and 294.5 square ins. so Vindskreenviper 2 was near the top end of the rules.

"With the loss of the Wakefield I had to build a new one and also had to build a new Jetex model. Thus the Wakefield [pictured] is the Mark 2 version which uses a wing related to Firebird that I built at the same time. The only difference between the Firebird and the Wakefield wings is that the Wakefield has a longer centre section span, but they were built using the same plan.

"Firebird is the model published in the 1953 Zaic Yearbook."

And we have a plan (contributed by Bill himself) of his Firebird from that same Yearbook in our

350 Plans section.

By way of summary of the "Vindskreenviper/Wakefield wing switching I was doing around 1951/52", Bill says:

"The main point to be drawn from what I did is that the Jetex model wing and stab, when adjusted properly on either type of model did produce a thermal hunting glide, as is witnessed by the loss of such models in booming thermals."