Vulcan fuel consumption

Thank you…

Thanks for these accurate figures ! I could fly my Stampe for ages (if only she had a Diesel engine :diablo: ) with what those Olympus would burn a single display.
Did you compute what sort of amount XH558 would burn during the kind of display she used to perfrom in the old days ?

Hi,

The Olympus 20201 fitted to the Vulcan has a fuel burn of 13,950 lbs/hr at maximum power (100-100.5%) at sea level on an ISA standard 15c, 1013.2mb day.

This equates to a rate of 55,800 lbs/hr for a Vulcan with Take Off power selected at the end of the runway. Quite a lot eh!

Quickly crunching a few numbers regarding the fuel burn and using Moggy’s figure of 60p per litre, this equates to £5.24 per second.

To put this into perspective though, in similar circumstances; Max power, lined up on runway etc….. a Tornado GR4 in max reheat is burning 6 gallons of Avtur per second. The Vulcan only burns around 2.

Before anybody gets too excited over the figures and Airshow costs as a result, can I assure you that these figures and resulting costs are well known by the TVOC and have long since been taken into account.

I can assure you that these figures are not dreamt up 😀 As one of the Propulsion engineers on TVOC, these figures have been taken direct from the Operating Manual of the Bristol Olympus and established records.

Thirsty though isn’t she 😀 😀

Flipflopman

What’s the going rate for Jet-A in the UK?

Around 60p / litre I believe.

If you call 10,000lb about 5,500 litres you won’t be far out, so say £3,500 to £5,000 fuel cost for the show, plus positioning.

This figure is very shaky and I certainly wouldn’t claim it to be anything better than a wild approximation.

Moggy

I’d guess that a typical Vulcan take off, loiter, display and landing wouldn’t get you a lot of change from 10-12,000lb

Moggy

What’s the going rate for Jet-A in the UK?
Assuming a best case scenario (getting fuel at bulk-rate airline prices) or even worse case (fuel at private..i.e. non-bulK) prices, what would be the fuel cost for the sortie mentioned above?
That might give us an idea of what it would cost to do an airshow.

I’m neutral (though I wish them the best) on the Vulcan issue (I’m neither a fan or a cynic…) however, I’d expect (or at least hope) the Vulcan supporters have researched this prior to spending the money on restoration.
After all, restoring a plane to flying condition is rather pointless if you can’t afford to fly the thing (which is way a Dakota or something similar is not parked in my pasture).

From text references in Vulcan 607, 2,000lb is barely enough to start up, taxi to the far end of a runway and then taxi back again.

10,000lb/hr is economical cruise at altitude.

I’d guess that a typical Vulcan take off, loiter, display and landing wouldn’t get you a lot of change from 10-12,000lb

Moggy

I am still searching for fuel usage which is affected by RPM, JPT and ALTITUDE but the Olympus oil consumption was 1.5 pints per hour maximum.

You might get an response from those that flew it if you posted this here….Did you fly the Vulcan thread

Vulcan / fuel

Well, to get a rough idea, may be at cruise speed would be a good start ?

Surely that would depend upon the varying throttle settings for the performance required – ie faster more fuel, slower less fuel? I guess what you’re really looking for is a graph, rather than a set figure?

Avro Vulcan Wiki – Click Here