Phantom "Black Mike" XV582

[ChemicalChaos]

I thought I would start a thread on this seeing as there doesn't appear to be one

I was talking about this aircraft today with a friend of mine, who is very heavily involved in the Phantom scene (for those in the know, he's the owner of XV490's cockpit amongst other things). For a general gist, Black Mike is the last British (i.e. RR Spey engined) Phantom still in operable condition. It currently lives at Leuchars, but a preservation trust has been set up to bring it to Bruntingthorpe to live with, and do fast taxi displays with, the other cold war jets there.

here's come more information - I'd love to see this come to fruition, imagine the noise!
http://www.xv582blackmike.co.uk

Said friend was up at Leuchars to help dismantle it for the trip, and they have apparently run into a snag. It has been decided that to remove the wings, the engines need to come out. To do this on a Phantom, they are dropped out from underneath into a special cradle then pulled backwards out from under the aircraft. This requires a special rig, and even then is apparently a sod of a job. Easy, I said - buy/borrow/steal one from one of the air forces still operating Phantoms. Here's the snag: the Spey rig is totally different to the Pratt and Whitney rig still in use, and we were the only air force to use Spey engines over the American specification. All the RAF gear has long since been scrapped and no-one knows where to even find the drawings to recreate it. Uh-oh....

[ChemicalChaos]

Hi all,

Thanks for the suggestions but those are display/storage cradles.
From what I can gather, engine removal uses a different, more complex jacking cradle as seen here:
http://maybach300c.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/jet-engi...



I'd imagine that if any were still extant in UK museums they would have been found and acquired by now - I believe the current hope is that one might reside somewhere in an eccentric aviation hoarder's scrapyard collection


Paul - I have no idea I'm afraid what the price of a working Phantom is!
However, I can tell you that a near-mint cockpit section like this (with all the fittings and instruments inside) is probably worth about £20k:



There is a dismantled but flyable MiG21 (a contemporary nemesis) for sale in Poland at £150k:
http://flightplanet.com/jet-aircraft-for-sale/miko...



And that Jet-Art aviation want a "POA" sum for the mint condition for the several running Tornados they have for sale......