Post amazingly cool pictures of aircraft (Volume 2)
Discussion
MartG said:
We have the Pegasus engine out of that a/c in the Fenland and West Norfolk Aviation Preservation Society museum..MartG said:
D_T_W said:
Stickyfinger said:
D_T_W said:
MartG said:
D_T_W said:
Stickyfinger said:
Lets not forget that support and maintenance of a normal military plane can be expected to cost 2 to 3 times it's acquisition cost and the Nimrods were far from normal. They belonged to a different era of manufacturing, designed in the '40s where planes were effectively coach built with the blueprints more a guide. I'm sure a modern Boeing P-8 for example you would know where everything was to the nearest fraction of a mm, the
Every time a new part would be needed it would have to be custom made for that particular airframe, thousands of experts *just* kept on staff for those planes.
IMO it was the right decision.
Fastdruid said:
D_T_W said:
MartG said:
D_T_W said:
Stickyfinger said:
Lets not forget that support and maintenance of a normal military plane can be expected to cost 2 to 3 times it's acquisition cost and the Nimrods were far from normal. They belonged to a different era of manufacturing, designed in the '40s where planes were effectively coach built with the blueprints more a guide. I'm sure a modern Boeing P-8 for example you would know where everything was to the nearest fraction of a mm, the
Every time a new part would be needed it would have to be custom made for that particular airframe, thousands of experts *just* kept on staff for those planes.
IMO it was the right decision.
Dr Jekyll said:
Fastdruid said:
D_T_W said:
MartG said:
D_T_W said:
Stickyfinger said:
Lets not forget that support and maintenance of a normal military plane can be expected to cost 2 to 3 times it's acquisition cost and the Nimrods were far from normal. They belonged to a different era of manufacturing, designed in the '40s where planes were effectively coach built with the blueprints more a guide. I'm sure a modern Boeing P-8 for example you would know where everything was to the nearest fraction of a mm, the
Every time a new part would be needed it would have to be custom made for that particular airframe, thousands of experts *just* kept on staff for those planes.
IMO it was the right decision.
Dr Jekyll said:
Would it have been practical to build new Nimrods? I've an idea it was considered as an option of some foreign sales could have got the numbers up.
It was certainly considered if you read up on the history of the programme, and with the benefit of hindsight that would probably have been more likely to succeed than what they actually did. With the benefit of non-bespoke standardised airframes, many of the development problems wouldn't have been there and the critical issue of ongoing maintainability would have been significantly reduced. However - given the small number of airframes and the relative unlikelihood of exports it is still unlikely that completely new airframes (as opposed to new wings, floor, engines, undercarriage, avionics and redesign/reengineering of everything else) would have ultimately made any financial sense either. The concise answer I suppose is that if they had got to where they did with standardised new build airframes then it wouldn't have been quite the no-brainer decision to chop them up and discard, but there is no guarantee that they would have got to that point nor that it would have been more cost effective.
Or in other words - almost certainly no, which is a shame as conceptually it would have been far more capable than any other options out there.
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