G-VTOL on the hover pad at Dunsfold

Dave T,

‘601 is still a largely complete fuselage, I can’t remember what state the canopies were in when I last saw her. I don’t have access to her, I just saw she was still there when I was at Yeovilton recently. As i said, she has been extensively stripped, including the rear fuselage skin which was used for an Indian T-bird. Best thing to do if you want to get bits is phone Yeovilton, I guess.
cheers
Dees01

At a rough guess, going from st Athan to Marham??

Great stuff guys.

What were all the aircraft used for the filming? Where did they find so many airworthy heavies?!

David,

I haven’t seen the accident report for Tim Ellison’s crash, so am not in position to comment. However, I have seen instances of the aircraft taking birds down the intake, it happened to one of our development jets just recently. I have seen 1″ tears in 6 fan blades caused by a blind rivet tail. I have seen the effects of doing rough ground trials, where the front fan looks like a bird has been nesting in it! None of which have caused any problems to the operation of the engine or aircraft.

I will concede that occurences of FOD damage on Pegasus engines is probably higher than most other a/c types due to the size and position of the intake

what were the reasons for the first and third of those?

How many Piston engined warbirds do we see going in due to engine problems?

[I]whilst if the Harrier has a problem when doing its party piece then it is totally reliant on gravity and gravity alone I]

As is Eurofighter, and a whole bunch of other fly by wire jets! If the donk quits, the jet falls out of the sky!! As Damien says, what other airshow failures has there been, aside from Lowestoft?

I can’t quite follow your logic on the spares and training argument. This will be no worse than for any other ex-military aircraft, and one could argue that since the Sea Harrier is still in service with the RN, and a Helluva lot of parts are common with the GR3, then spares availability must be better. In addition, people will have worked on the aircraft in service a lot more recently than with a Meteor. if we’re allowed to fly Gnats, then, from a servicing/complexity point of view, then we should be able to fly a Harrier. realistically, we’ll never be allowed to because of the lack of manual reversion, and even with the best will in the world, the thing glides like a brick.

Hey, Flood,

the Meteor has a worse service record than the Harrier – would you like to see them grounded too?

Cottesmore has two GR3s on site – the one on the gate, and 3 Sqn have one outside their hangar.