Victor for Newark Air Museum

There was a Valiant cockpit on loan very briefly from said person, but it soon moved off up to the Highland Aviation Museum in Inverness.

Great acquisition, all you need is the Valiant cockpit back to make it game set and match! I remember the museum having the Valiant cockpit some years back, didn’t this belong to Mr Ken Ward?

Very promising! 🙂

That’s looking promising! 🙂

It’s good to report some progress on the Victor cockpit at NAM, a couple of re-painting photographs can be found in this section of the NAM website http://www.newarkairmuseum.org/gallery.php 🙂

A few quick responses in chronological order:

I’m afraid that the size of the cockpit precludes it going inside whilst it is on loan at NAM.

In view of the various power-consumption comments sometime I must take a photograph of the 13 amp plug sticking out from the looms of cabling – it is rather amusing.

Yes it is the former Elvington unit that has more recently been stored outside at a location in Lincolnshire.

I sense that this coming Saturday, during the Aeroboot/ Aerojumble event the ‘Victorish’ cockpit will be once again attracting a lot of attention!

I’ve just been sent a weblink to an Experience Nottinghamshire blog that features the Victor cockpit 🙂 http://news.experiencenottinghamshire.com/victor-cockpit-moves-to-newark-air-museum/

That be the one.

Is this the one that’s still at Elvington according to Thunder and Lightnings? Weirdly enough EBay link still works for when it was on…

http://item.mobileweb.ebay.co.uk/viewitem?itemId=120693571187

I used to work on this at Elvington years and years ago (hence my forum name!). We had just got it fully working again, of which I have a video taken around 2002/3 and then museum turned the power off one day. I then went to work on the real thing!

Needless to say after the effort we went to getting it working we weren’t happy, although we can appreciate it cost a lot of money in electricity to run.

Blue at least I carry legal tender mate, and don’t have security guards on my piggy bank!:p As to the colour, white is a non starter, being outside it will fade and deteriote far to quickly, Camo is the way forward.

Being outside? Besides any bias surely something like this can be found some cover – as a sim its full of a lot of electricals and sensitive stuff but its a rare historical one-off also that will struggle out in the wet. We’ve struggled with ‘sweating’ and rain in recent years inc XL445 and the upper roof panels inc oxy-regs etc are white and ruined now. Trying to get dehunidifiers sorted but rain ingress has probably been more of a problem. XL160’s door leaks too and ‘runs’ after a downpour while her roof rents were patched as best as could be (after being found inverted at RAF Barnham many years ago).

Getting to the point where I’ve been considering cutting holes in the rear bulkheads to install some wind-driven fans to bring in air (can’t find anything like that on the web, only electrical jobs) in ‘445’s case the air-flow would exit out of the bomb aimer’s position. Staff have tried to seal all external ingress points along canopy etc with tape and sealer etc but rain still gets in on ‘445’s port pilots side and a long window box has been the only temporary answer, can’t be traced where its coming in since external restoration 3 years ago.

Starboard rear side always gets wet too but even a basic roof to keep the worst out isn’t possible. It means kit I’ve had for years can’t be fitted at present which is frustrating and the rudder bar area is trying to corrode -but its extremely tight to work in such a confined space if at all and the seats are in the way but can’t be removed! Ay-ya-ya, we’re all mad and doomed.

We bid a ridiculously small amount of money for the whole Victor sim shebang when it was at Marham in 1993 when I shot it in situ but luckily never won the tender! Can confirm it was all in white but had an external box over the screen, to the point that I thought it wasn’t built like an actual production model, rather like commercial sims.

Thanks’ for the positive feedback – from information noted whilst at the museum today it would appear that the ‘in-service’ white scheme is currently the front runner for the Victor cockpit repaint!

You would need your nearest local friendly power station to ramp up output to run the beastie! I think Ian you’ll find that camo fades as well, to a particularly unpleasant shade of brown and grey. The sim was only ever gloss white ‘in service’, so it seems only right. Not my call though.

Multiple post

My choice would be white, but its not mine to paint so its the owners decision.

Very nice addition indeed T.O. My choice of colour would be Anti-Flash White, to remind me of Victor XL-161.

Bill T.

Mostlyharmless – the current loan does not involve any of the control equipment that would be required to run it as a simulator again; so I believe that option is unlikely to materialise. We also understand the electric consumption could make that economically unviable.

As for the colour scheme – discussions are underway with the owner on that topic and details will be posted as soon as any agreement is reached.

To check out some crew for Bruntingthorpe?

I hope this isn’t a completely silly question, but would it ever be possible to get working as a simulator again? Or failing that be converted to work as a simulator, like the Jetstream at Speke?

Mh

Unfortunatly not moggy it doesnt stay white it yellows and fades. I know you can point to airliners staying white but the lighter the colour the harder it seems to be to maintain a finish outside. also like black it shows dirt easier.

I would have thought white was by far the most resistant finish to fading?

Moggy

This is not a vote for white – frankly I don’t really care what it is painted as. In terms of preservation the cheapest finish that is authentic works for me.