RE: Help Keep The Last Vulcan Flying

[Squabbler]

My first thought was about something bad happened again in Iceland

What a machine, though!

[mike62]

Flew over the house several times during Farnborough this year, just about the only plane the wife rushes to the door to look at.

[missdiane]

dvs_dave said:

Hey PH, why not have a Sunday Service type fundraiser event up at Bruntingthorpe where the Vulcan lives (I think) with the proceeds going to Vulcan to the Sky? Vulcan of course needs to be on display with a "your car and the Vulcan" photo opp set-up.

They could also possibly allow track time whilst there?

I'm sure they'd be keen?

I was thinking that on sunday, most people would pay money to have been at Sliverstone on sunday gone, more so if it was for such a deserving charity

[2volvos]

fatboy18 said:

2volvos said:

This was the one I was thinking of - did it end up morphing into the tasteful looking beige machine above? As opposed to the subtle and tasteful looking burgundy machine it was of course...

COOR, THAT'S a blast from the past, used to see that in the banstead area a fair bit, think it belonged to a guy who had a Gearbox repair company (autos)

Hmm - Merlin engined car. Owner runs gearbox repair shop.

Coincidence?

[oily66]

My uncle did the wiring design for the vulcan he was some chief electrical engineer for lucas aerospace. I only found this out just before my dad died and my uncle was in a home then and was to far gone to talk about his time on this sort of stuff.....gutted. what an extrordinary project to be involved in. Just couldn't do somethng like that these days too many money men involved.

[2volvos]

oily66 said:

My uncle did the wiring design for the vulcan he was some chief electrical engineer for lucas aerospace. I only found this out just before my dad died and my uncle was in a home then and was to far gone to talk about his time on this sort of stuff.....gutted. what an extrordinary project to be involved in. Just couldn't do somethng like that these days too many money men involved.

I'd urge you to read the book I talked about earlier called Empire of the Clouds - I'm sure you'd find it facsinating. It is very demoralising to know about the technical and heroic work our forefathers did while most of us shuffle money and wiggle mice about. For my part, my grandad, after leaving the RAF, worked for R-R producing jet fans.

[GKP]

[RedAlfa]

Yesterday's spending review included this: "International climate finance will be £2.9bn over five years.". They should scrap that BULLst completely, and spend it on community projects like THIS. ;-)

Edited by RedAlfa on Thursday 21st October 22:07

[will261058]

chevronb37 said:

Capt Canuck said:

As a kid growing up in the suburbs of Vancouver in the late 70s/early 80s, in my mind the Vulcan was the star of the (at the time) yearly Abbotsford Air Show.

[rosetinted]
Others could have the oohs and ahhs of the Snowbirds and Blue Angels acrobat teams or the up and downs of the Harriers. For me the annual appearance of the Vulcan was one of the highlights of the summer, with its mid-week arrival, 3 days of flying over the house on its route above town and its late Sunday or Monday departures. I can remember (just) drawing it with the help of a box of 64 Crayolas.
[/rosetinted]

Like many others I typically have a decent amount of sympathy fatigue, but I'd consider myself a terrible terrible person to not donate, regardless of how the VTTST plays out over the years.

By coincidence, I went to the Abbotsford Air Show in 1997 (I think) and we couldn't believe one of the stealth bombers was flying there. Awesome show.

I went to the Abbotsford Airshow with one of our Nimrods around 92/93 and had a fantastic time. The hospitality was first rate and my Team won the the prize for being the top Crew socially, helped by a Piper and we all had large Tartan Bunnets with red hair hanging out of them. We were usually the first lot up on the tables in the bar! Oh happy days

[will261058]

///ajd said:

will261058 said:

///ajd said:

A fine tribute to large complex aircraft engineering in the UK.

It should be inspiring stuff for new generations to get into science and technology, but the current climate is not a good one.

Not a good week for the last ever wholly UK produced large aircraft project.

RIP MRA4 & good luck in the future to all the fine engineers who put so much energy into it.

Edited by ///ajd on Wednesday 20th October 23:36

Edited by ///ajd on Wednesday 20th October 23:36

I echo your sentiments, however although the MRA4 was built by BAE it is not wholly British. I have spent the best part of the last 30 years working on Nimrod MR1 and MR2 so I know a bit about them. The main British part of the MRA4 is the fuselage. The rest of it is a mixture of Airbus Industries and BAE. The engines are by Rolls Royce/BMW. The hydraulic systems are mainly off the shelf Airbus. The Avionics are a mixture of euro/Canadian/US systems and some British. I dearly wanted this thing to be put into service but it was the same as the last Nimrod variant - the AEW version- took too long and way over budget. When will we learn! Now we have nothing suitable to do the job the Nimrod needed to do

Edited by will261058 on Wednesday 20th October 23:52

Of course you're right it has much international content - but it was all designed, integrated, assembled and flight tested in the UK (noting of course some of the key mission systems were off shore sourced).

My intended point really was that the end of Nimrod is truely the potential end for a range of engineering skills associated with whole large ac design, integrated, flight test & production. Whilst we can be proud that UK engineered wings are still be to found on nearly all Airbuses, the majority of the key aerospace skills associated with large ac airframe assembly and flight testing left these shores for Germany, France and elsewhere many many years ago. Now they are all gone. Very sad.

I couldnt agree more. As I said before I wanted this to be built and I would most likely have worked on it once it had come into service. I still live near RAF Kinloss and Lossiemouth and on tonights news we hear that Lossie may be closing next year.

[bigburd]

missdiane said:

dvs_dave said:

Hey PH, why not have a Sunday Service type fundraiser event up at Bruntingthorpe where the Vulcan lives (I think) with the proceeds going to Vulcan to the Sky? Vulcan of course needs to be on display with a "your car and the Vulcan" photo opp set-up.

They could also possibly allow track time whilst there?

I'm sure they'd be keen?

I was thinking that on sunday, most people would pay money to have been at Sliverstone on sunday gone, more so if it was for such a deserving charity

Liking the idea...maybe worth looking at something like the Dad's Day Out - Ride in a Supercar Options as well

[rob1234]

An awesome aircraft.

Fury1630 said:

havoc said:

* After the war the RAF decided to operate Tornado F.Mk2's (later 3's) out of Stanley to provide some organic air-cover to the islands. This necessitated extending the runway (even though the Tornado has much-better short-field capability than the Mirage). Some years later they realised this was too expensive to maintain so they withdrew the Tornados leaving a rather-more Mirage-friendly runway, should the Argies ever re-invade! Notice also that we've just withdrawn from service our last Aircraft Carrier and the RAF hasn't had a long-range strike capability for decades...

No Harriers after May next year either - the increasingly beligerent Argentineans only have to bide thier time, we've already found the oil for them.

Surely a decent amount of deterrence lays in the 4 Typhoons based at MPA...? MPA being the reason they binned maintaining Stanley. Oh, and the RIC is a lot better equipped than the RM det in '82..

AntJC said:

havard01 said:

They have got a Vulcan at Coventry Air Museum, they let you into the cockpit, it's an awesome bit of kit. Wouldn't fancy bailing out of it though, only thepilot and co-pilot have got ejector seats. (Because it cost moremoney to train them, so they were worth saving.)

You are 100% correct.

One of these crashed on Malta in the 70's, both Pilot & Co pilot ejected to safety, the two other members of the crew went down with the plane, as their positions were not fitted with ejector seats.

I believe that it was expected that in an emergency, they would make their escape out of the bottom of the aircraft??

True - there was a chute and the seats just tip you out... Apparently, the backseaters sometimes left the pins in the pilot/co-pilots ejector seats to 'concentrate the mind' in case of emergency...

[will261058]

rob1234 said:

An awesome aircraft.

Fury1630 said:

havoc said:

* After the war the RAF decided to operate Tornado F.Mk2's (later 3's) out of Stanley to provide some organic air-cover to the islands. This necessitated extending the runway (even though the Tornado has much-better short-field capability than the Mirage). Some years later they realised this was too expensive to maintain so they withdrew the Tornados leaving a rather-more Mirage-friendly runway, should the Argies ever re-invade! Notice also that we've just withdrawn from service our last Aircraft Carrier and the RAF hasn't had a long-range strike capability for decades...

No Harriers after May next year either - the increasingly beligerent Argentineans only have to bide thier time, we've already found the oil for them.

Surely a decent amount of deterrence lays in the 4 Typhoons based at MPA...? MPA being the reason they binned maintaining Stanley. Oh, and the RIC is a lot better equipped than the RM det in '82..

AntJC said:

havard01 said:

They have got a Vulcan at Coventry Air Museum, they let you into the cockpit, it's an awesome bit of kit. Wouldn't fancy bailing out of it though, only thepilot and co-pilot have got ejector seats. (Because it cost moremoney to train them, so they were worth saving.)

You are 100% correct.

One of these crashed on Malta in the 70's, both Pilot & Co pilot ejected to safety, the two other members of the crew went down with the plane, as their positions were not fitted with ejector seats.

I believe that it was expected that in an emergency, they would make their escape out of the bottom of the aircraft??

True - there was a chute and the seats just tip you out... Apparently, the backseaters sometimes left the pins in the pilot/co-pilots ejector seats to 'concentrate the mind' in case of emergency...

Not true. There is a stowage position for all the seat pins to be put in when removed from the seats and part of the pilots Flight Reference Cards which contain all check lists requires confirmation that all pins have been removed and are stowed. This is primarily to prevent the pilot forgetting to remove any of the pins.

[rob1234]

Fair enough - let's not let the truth get in the way of a good story though, eh?

[will261058]

rob1234 said:

Fair enough - let's not let the truth get in the way of a good story though, eh?

Yeah lets not and right enough it might make them try that wee bit harder

[will261058]

Anyone read the article in the Daily Record today about Nimrod MRA4? Apparently BAE Woodford will be building 6 of them over the next 2 years because they have been bought and paid for already...then they will be taken away and scrapped! This is at the same time as we are asking the Yanks to find a Russian Akula class sub that somewhere off these shores. Two P3 orions are flying out of - wait for it - RAF Kinloss but cant find it. And our Nimrod MR2s which would have found it are lying idle. If the new ones have been paid for why are we not using them when they are ready. Why not apply the same logic as they did for the AC carriers. if this sub is intelligence gathering they wont find any around here

[Garlick]

missdiane said:

dvs_dave said:

Hey PH, why not have a Sunday Service type fundraiser event up at Bruntingthorpe where the Vulcan lives (I think) with the proceeds going to Vulcan to the Sky? Vulcan of course needs to be on display with a "your car and the Vulcan" photo opp set-up.

They could also possibly allow track time whilst there?

I'm sure they'd be keen?

I was thinking that on sunday, most people would pay money to have been at Sliverstone on sunday gone, more so if it was for such a deserving charity

Charity has been discussedm but it would have to be

a) Not mandatory, SS meets are free after all
b) A charity that suits our hosts too, as an example Rolls-Royce collect for Sussex Air Ambulance
c) Would probably have to work around our existing events. Organising an event at somewhere like Brunters would be quite hard to do, but a bucket on the gate of existing meets is easy enough.

Let's see.....

[tbs30stm]

Donated!!

[Scotty2]

Made my donation today. I have followed the saga from seeing her last public take off in 1992, to the show at Waddinton when she re-appeared.

Spending on foreign aid - billions.....Spending on the last British bomber to drop bombs in anger-NIL. The Lottery did contribute. After some persuading....


At Edinburgh.






Please Please donate.

[gpow]

many years ago my now wife and I stood at the end of the runway at Biggin Hill when the Vulcan took off, not only did it make a hole in the runway from the engine thrust but it made her charlies wobble - never forgiven or indeed forgotten