** SAD NEWS

Ken Bedford passed away suddenly on 20th January 2015 age 91 years. Lyndon Bedford would like the modelling community to know that 'ETA' has gone.

** END

In this gallery are some images of Ken Bedford and family and of the engines that the Bedford Family Designed. The Bedfords were also involved in the manufacture of other stuff such as the laboratory balance shown here courtesy of Michael Meyn and RAF helicopter pilot bone domes.

I was lucky enough to meet Ken a few years back and found him to be a thoroughly engaging but very modest individual - so I didn't get a whole lot of war stories from Ken. Happily others have been kind enough to pass on their memories of racing with Ken and some of those anecdotes you will find in other galleries within this web-site. I especially like the following one from Ray Tuthill:

"Ken was not only a very good engineer and engine designer he was also a very good musician and played sax. On one occasion when we were testing one of his latest engines for him the sax was still in the boot of his car from a gig the night before and I remember him showing it to me (I was interested in clarinet and tinkered with one but hesitate to claim I could play it!). I think it was a tenor, but it's a long time ago and might have been an alto. Ken sometimes used to guest with the Ted Heath band if one of Ted's regulars was not available so he must have been pretty good and had a good ear for pitch, which is where the connection with engines comes in.

We knew exactly what rpm the engines were doing on the ground and I always had a Smiths tacho with me in the box of gear. We also knew from tests on Ken's dynamometer the speed at which the peak power output was developed but we had no way of knowing other than listening and guesswork what engine rpm we were getting in the air and whether the engine and prop were optimally matched. It was Ken who came up with an answer. He built and calibrated an audio tacho; in electronic terms it was a signal generator driving an earphone. Some brave soul then had to get in the middle of the circle as close as posible to the pilot (Don Walker) to minimise the doppler effect but without getting in the way (no mean feat given that the model was cracking round at up to 120 mph by then) They then listened to the engine with one ear and the signal generator with the other and twiddled the dial until the notes matched then read off the frequency/engine speed. The huge difference in decibels between the earphone and screaming engine did not help and, not surprisingly with his musical background, Ken was best at it;

Regards. Ray Tuthill"