End of the Brunty Guppy

How sad, another loss and I fear a fair few more coming to their end in 2021

There’s an interesting point on volunteer hours for MFowler. Here in the UK ,charities are encouraged to report on the volunteer hours expended in helping them to operate

Interestingly, we’ve never been asked to report on that…

I suppose that if we added up all the time actually not spent on ‘hands on’ activity (research, CAD work, admin etc) even we would be somwhere in the order of 2000-3000 hours per year. Sobering thought:)

John

Reports elsewhere that the Guppy is sadly no more as from yesterday.

Rob

Morning 12Jaguar – WB491 certainly has come on when you consider where it started from after its brief spell in South Wales all those years ago; but it’s still work in progress but this has been delayed by Covid.

There’s an interesting point on volunteer hours for MFowler. Here in the UK ,charities are encouraged to report on the volunteer hours expended in helping them to operate – for 2019 Newark Air Museum reported 16,628 volunteer hours across multiple projects and activities. No doubt Covid will reduce that figure for 2020.

One of the LPG pilots/committee members put a good write up on the Bruntingthorpe FB group over the weekend trying to clear up lots of rumours. Ill see if I can find it again as it had some good points but it did confirm the Guppy was for the chop. 

Sigh … note to Key … when there’s a 30-60 second lag before anything happens when you hit the Post button, and you think What the hell??? and hit Post again, you’re going to get a lot of double posts.

On the other hand, that’s a good way to boost your forums total post count.

Sadly, taking volunteers and their efforts for granted has become all too common in this era, when everything is treated as a dollars and cents transaction and if it can’t be “monetized” it must not be worth much.

Hi Howard

been a while since I looked in on the Ashton cockpit, it’s certainly come on a treat!

John

In answer to Oracal’s enquiry about the Ashton fuselage, yes it is still at Newark Air Museum and it is still displayed outside; and as can be seen in the Work Gallery it has been receiving some TLC:

http://www.newarkairmuseum.org/gallery

As far as I am aware there are no plans for it to go inside! 

    As I understand it, the airframe is owned by D.Walton.

    Has he personally confirmed it is his intention that the Guppy be dismantled/scrapped, or is that       conjecture ?

Airbus has Guppys in collections both at Hamburg and Toulouse.

Has anyone contacted Airbus as they have a museum.

just my opinion but could it be that there is insufficient space at the new location for the collection hence something has to go??

I agree with the above posts. In my formative years I used to watch 242 OCU Beverley and Hastings flying over our school while bashing the circuit.

Is that small piece of Avro Ashton fuselage still sat outdoors?

It’s a shame they don’t put preservation orders on these things.

What happened to the no aircraft would be scrapped…. that’s not just disgusting it’s a bloody tragedy,  the lot of them involved in this decision including Walton  should hold their heads in shame

It might well have been covered here earlier but, I’ve just looked in on AFORS and a group there are appealing for crowdfunding to restore the last Blackburn Beverly to – they say –  flight status.

Its not being restored to fly, nor are they keeping the engines.

A few problems with this… a large amount of exfoliation corrosion was removed from the tail plane spars back in the early 1980s. Angle iron was used to strengthen what was left, attached with bolts to the spar remains. All electrical wiring was cut at the mainplane/fuselage junction when it was moved from Paull. The engines were never inhibited either.

I’m sure there’s more, but it’s been a while.

It might well have been covered here earlier but, I’ve just looked in on AFORS and a group there are appealing for crowdfunding to restore the last Blackburn Beverly to – they say –  flight status.

www.afors.com

^^^^^ what he said!

TT

Sorry but I don’t agree. Having large or indeed any aircraft under cover is always beneficial, but the DAS at Duxford and the Newark Air Museum have for the past 45 years or so shown how with limited resources but hard work, incredible enthusiasm and determination from volunteers you can acquire and preserve long term large aircraft outside!

And having visited and donated to the Guppy on numerous occasions, I can only sympathise with those who have volunteered and worked on it, only to be told to sling yer hook. I myself was until the beginning of this year a volunteer at a museum for six and a half years – giving up practically every Sunday to work on the building itself and exhibits within, only to be told with just a couple of months notice we were to close permanently and move out.

Finding people who are prepared to give up their precious free time is sometimes taken for granted far too much IMO!