Shackleton WL790 – Mr McHenry

If you have a look at the article of the last flight quite a bit of the glass has gone to an interesting milky white colour, so much so for a second or two I thought they had been painted over with a protective coat

Phill_P
Man at first glance I thought they had already started the repaint beginning with the lower part of the nose section! Amazing how fast the nose glass has frosted over since she left the UK

In happier times!

http://staverton.fotopic.net/p47409707.html

Staverton Airshow circa 1989

Hello all – long time reader, first time poster alert!

I was lucky enough to visit Pima last week and saw the old chap in person. He’s not yet officially on display, tucked behind a fence in the restoration area just behind the Peacemaker, but it was easy enough to have a good look in any case.

There’s a few more shots in my flickr page:

http://flickr.com/photos/willp/tags/wl790/

Cheers,
Will

Yes at least we tried to keep her from wearing as little as possible, as for the main RAFM sites there are two shacks at an airport who would benefit from a little time indoors :rolleyes:

As much as I despise the main RAFM sites for not having a Shack, I too would think it would be sad to see WR960 leave Manchester. Its now a very well established exhibit, and must surely be the best preserved Shackleton anywhere, even if it is wearing on the edges.

Ok thanks for the info – I have a bit of a soft spot for her as I volunteered at the museum in the late 80’s/early 90’s and got to work on her a fair bit back then.

I would be a bit horrified if she left 🙂

I do beg your pardon – chopped was not really the best choice of words and yes you are right of course it was at the designated points :D, however after so much time as a static display some areas are showing various states of wear.

however I have heard rumors that she may be leaving Manchester, can anyone confirm that at all?

I think the rumours stemmed from the original plans for the MOSI extension which didn’t show her in the floor plan. Later an architects impression was released which did show her. Best speak to Nick Forder for the definitive answer….

I do beg your pardon – chopped was not really the best choice of words and yes you are right of course it was at the designated points :D, however after so much time as a static display some areas are showing various states of wear.

however I have heard rumors that she may be leaving Manchester, can anyone confirm that at all?

Oovebi, it wasn’t chopped into sections, it was properly broken down at the designed transport joints. A Shackleton can be comparatively easy to move by road when this is done, but it is flippin hard work!

Checking with my source the remaining five retired with about 13,000 hours on the airframes. WR960 (a case in point had a respar but was chopped into sections to allow fitting at Manchester, which I suspect ruins that spar life) was retired at around 9741 hours on the airframe.

I have worked on WR960 and I suspect that a return to the skies for this particular unit would be an amazingly long drawn out job (not including the type support issues)

Mods, resparring, whatever, I’m pretty certain we won’t see a Shack flying in the UK again, unless the South Africans try and brave it again and send one over. Funny how theirs fly and didn’t have the resparring or rebuilds (because of embargos and sanctions).
The letters CAA loom large!

Sorry Ben, my slack use of the English language! 😮

I was thinking that they mave have had a mod rather than a replacment back in the 80’s while I was writing that and so it slipped into the sentence. Sorry.

Just to clarify the Shacks need a spar REPLACEMENT.

im confused about the issue over a “Spar mod”

i thought a shack would have had to be completely resparred to fly in this country again? is this the “Mod” or is the mod not a complete respar?

ben

Unfortunately I’m no Shackelton expert so I cant quote hours etc but the spars on all the remaining RAF Shacks were expired when the RAF retired them. The only reason that the RAF were allowed to continue operating them was that they were a ‘required tool of war’ that was seeing plenty of use way beyond their original expected life due to the Nimrod AEW3 debacle.

I’m not sure of the time scale between the end of military Shackelton flying and Air Atlantique acquiring the DA but the CAA wont allow any flights in the UK until a spar mod has been done. As fas as I’m aware that has always been the case.

I’m in the office again on Friday and I’ll see what I can find out, might even venture into the Shackelton Design Office!

The resparring programme was from 1976 to 1980, for the twelve AEW Shacks, and ther were returned to service one by one when they were completed. Six had to go in the early ’80s due to defence cuts, and of course the highest hours aircraft went. An example is WR960 RAFM at Manchester, it was reparred in early ’79 and stopped flying in 1982. So plenty of spar life, but higher on overall hours life.
I have never heard of another respar programme in the ’80s, and surely such a move would have slimed down the remaining fleet for operational reasons. I’m wondering if there was some other, lesser, spar related work in that time period though.

WL790, the originator of this thread, was the last Shackleton to be resparred, being completed by July 1980.

Im sure that when the Shacks first came on to the market, the CAA said they couldnt fly in the UK unless BAe (the DA) would fully support the type, they didn’t want to. That was irrespective of any spar mods.
Has this now changed?
Was’nt this the original reason why WL790 went to the ‘States?
DGH should know…

Sorry VX just realised I never answered this! 😮

It was always the plan to bring her back to the UK right upto the day when the decision was made to leave her stateside. Unfortunately though without the spar replacement it was never really on.

Why were the spars deemed by BAe to require replacing after being used for just over ten years? Was there corrosion issues or was there some incredible utilisation during the operational period since they were replaced?

I read the FP article on Mr McH last night and was impressed by the fact that a group of guys got into an aircraft that had not flown for years, ran the engines for a bit then took off in it (OK, not quite that simple, but you get my drift).

I know us Brits are a bit Health-and-Safety-obsessed, but I am surprised the Yanks allow you to fly something that might crash – just as long as you don’t fly over someones house!!!

I take my – virtual – hat off to the crew – you guys got b@llz:D 😀

DS

they did a great job – less than a week, and mostly thanks to super engineer Ben Cox – also gives you an idea how well these aircraft were built – the engines had not run for over 2 years.

the FAA basically do an inspection and issue a ferry permit – the permit only allows crew to fly in the aircraft (no pax or non essentials), and is good for one pre-determined flight – the decision to fly or not is ultimately left to the crew.

and yes, they did a fantastic job

..snip ..In America the FAA allow the aircraft to operate on on an experimental category as long as you keep a close eye on the spars and dont fly over populated area’s etc. snip…

I read the FP article on Mr McH last night and was impressed by the fact that a group of guys got into an aircraft that had not flown for years, ran the engines for a bit then took off in it (OK, not quite that simple, but you get my drift).

I know us Brits are a bit Health-and-Safety-obsessed, but I am surprised the Yanks allow you to fly something that might crash – just as long as you don’t fly over someones house!!!

I take my – virtual – hat off to the crew – you guys got b@llz:D 😀

DS

Ok I have found the information and they had a respar in late 1980 with a return to service in 1981 🙂