Four Lightning"s Part Two……Photo's

Yes, they are flying!

are there any lightnings flying?

Here are some shots of them in the air….

I thought the SA Shack was out of airframe hours…nice to see her in the air 🙂

Apparently the bigger concern is available aircrew hours 🙂 – the guys involved with the Shackleton reckon that at the current rate of flying, the airframe will outlast them all!

dunno then i will leave this in the hands of the experts keep me posted if anything changes

MJR

Nice thoughts but just reading your post racks up the pound signs, you are right he is a scrappy but dealing in cars and vans only and there is no cover on site to work under.

When I was there he has only basic machinery i.e. fork lift and cutting torch, the site to me doesn’t seem to have a high turnover of buisness putting money at a premium, the council who are getting ‘tired’ of this ‘eyesore’ will not entertain the idea that it could be restored to gate guard condition, some suit will probably pipe up and question the planning permision side of things which would incour further costs.

Lookng at the airframe there is not ONE access pannel left and IIRC that is about 100 pannels all together!!, wheels, tyres, radome, canopy, ailerons, rudder, all may be available but at what cost and timescale? by the time you have finished you could easily talk 5K in parts alone, with regards to the belly tank it is smashed through where the airframe colapsed on the supportng frame.

One big thing is the wings, they were cut INSIDE the main undercarriage and they offer NO support to the airframe, to get her stood properly alone would require wings off and some major structural work to be done.

Ok so lets think in real terms, if it realy did take three weeks for him and a couple of co-worker like you say, in wages (he would have to pay them!) that would be about £300 per week for three people = £2700

Parts – begged, borrowed, loaned, bought then you could look at anothe 2K

Paint – not clear on this one so I think you could easily bust 500 qud on a roller job

Others – for fibreglass, filler, ally sheeting and anything else then easily 500 again

Wings – removal and re-aligning and re-welding (specialist ally welding) at a guess 500 to 1000 maybe.

So conservativley speaking you could do it for around 6-7k, that is money out of his pocket, after all that what benefit would it do for his buisnes??, it didn’t help A1 Comercials that much (they went bust).

Consider this though, as a scrap dealer which would you rather do, pay out 6-7k to re-build her or scrap her and earn 2K in the hand?.

Regards,

John.

I thought the SA Shack was out of airframe hours…nice to see her in the air 🙂

lets badger the scrappy till sucumbs to the preassure

surely hes not scrapping it now then!??? when we went to look at it about a year ago when he first took ownership of it, it was in a bad state, but being that all the bits like ventral tank, aelerons, spine panels, missing panels, canopy, bullet, wheels, tyres etc are available from gash stock from the various groups, it seemed to me that if he and his bods had given it a basic rub down and clean up, and quick roller job of paint, the rest was sortable to look reasonably presentable, all be it with a quick “lash it up” job. For panels that he cant get, well, a few sheets of basic ally and pop rivet gun, its surprising how quickly panels can be knocked up for a display piece. HEs a scrappy, he must have loads of sheet metal knocking about. As for the holes in the fuselage, they could be quite easily sorted with fibre glass matting, by the time it was painted it would look quite presentable. The only question mark to me was the wings? attachment looked decidedly dodgy! personally I wouldn’t scrap it, a concerted effort from him and a couple of his others over 3 weeks, could have it reasonably tidy, after all its just a question of making it look reasonable, its too far gone to worry about corrsosion etc, but he is a scrap man, with all the necessary heavy equipment to do whats required. he cant be talking about a full restoration, unless hes nuts 😀 ! Is he?? I cant see that a quick bodge it and scarper job ( which will be a 150% improvement) on a hulk would cost a great deal, the main cost for him would be getting the missing bits.

John, thanks for the plug, 🙂 the comment ‘how do you give money to groups to save lightnings?’ interests me,
Landraver, did you know about our QRA shed project and that we are still 20K short of finishing it to house our two F6’s ?
Have a look at this thread http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=48646&highlight=qra+bruntingthorpe

Any donations are gladly recived, though our web site. 😀

And John is correct we were invited over to give XN728 a look over a few months ago the owner wanted to know if she was resortable and was asking if we could help out, the honest answer was no, not without a hell of alot of time and money, she looks so sad, maybe its best to put her out of her misery, sad I know but she should have been saved 15 years ago.
You cant save em all

Landraver if you want to suport the preservation of Lightnings then the best place to be is Bruntingthorpe in Leicestishire, I am not far from Hull myself and it takes me about 1h45mins down the A1.

Each year there is a general open day and a QRA day, the general open day have fast taxi runs performed by a Victor, Lightning, Bucaneer, Hunter, Jaypee, Iskra and a couple of others I forget now, there is almost unrestricted access to the aircraft and the LPG are a bloody good bunch too!!, all for the princley sum of about 10 quid on the gate.

The QRA day is fantastic with fast taxi runs by both Lightning’s and also pairs QRA re-enactment, there are stalls and displays by other groups too so lots to do, again all for about a tenner on the gate.

Another good reason to visit Brunty is XH558, she is hangered there, words cannot describe the feeling being stood 20 feet away from two Avons at full chat.

Visit their web site for loads of info and they have a well stocked shop too……http://www.photo-restorations.co.uk/lightnings/index.htm

Regards,

John.

maybe the guy at elvington got it wrong but he did say the council had had enough of it also, how do you give money to groups to save lightnings? -just a thought

Be sad to see her go but like you say, hopefully some good will come out of it.

The only thing that I have heard is that some members of the LPG went to see it and offer advice to the guy who had ideas of restoration.

It was seen as a dead loss due to the amount of vandalism and corrosion, IMHO the front fus should be removed at the transport joint for possible restoration and the tail fin should be mounted at the Newark Air Museum as a monument to her, also the engines could be used as display items and maybe one or two other items from deep within her fuselage may be salvagable.

It would be ashame to let her get chopped up without any thought but then again she is sat in a scrap yard where metal is money so she isn’t in the best position to start with.

Regards,

John.

Looks like a synchro start as they are taxying one after the other, nice shots by the way and welcome to the forum.

Regards,

John.

speaking of all things lightning, i was at elvington today and i spoke to one of the ground crew and he said that the lightning that you sent me pictures of (the one next to the A1 thats falling to bits) is about to be cut up because the council have had enough of it, have you heard anything different?

regards, Dave

well i dont know honest question

Hmmmmm…..not trying to be nasty here at all, but, have you actually read the first post of this thread…….. 😮 :confused:

In particular the bit that says “I just returned from last weekend’s airshow in Cape Town,and enclose the following. (a) The four ships starting up for the historic flight.”

Or read any of last weeks weeks thread that this one is a follow up to…. :confused:

In case not see here:-
Four Lighnings flying

well i dont know honest question

1722

Lovely photo of 1722, Etienne? Do you mind if I use it as my desktop wallpaper for a while?

Reminds me of an 8 Sqd cartoon on the wall of the stairs going down to the cavern at Motorbooks. Shackleton escorted by a Lightning with the caption “Eight screws are better than two blow jobs”, but I guess when you’ve got FOUR Lightnings………

I’ve just lowered the tone of this thread haven’t I? Sorry!

Synchronised startup

Excellent photos thanks for sharing! I wonder if they did a synchronised startup?

Peter, I can assure you they did a Sync. startup.Apart from the tremendous noise, the smell and vibrations on the tarmac sent shivers through my whole body! …….surely something any aircraft nut should experience at least once before they die!

Have a nice workweek,
Etienne.

your kidding right?

are there any lightnings flying?

Age Restriction……Lightnings

Hi there Sailor;………Had a quick glance at Thundercity’s site at www.thundercity.com/tc.main.htm and could not see any age restriction.
If Virgin Branson could do it, you can as well!! Just keep those POUNDS
handy.

Cheers!,
Etienne.