I can assure you the plaque was put in place last year and hasn’t been there since day one as it took a long time for them to come up with a CAA approved solution.

Coincidentaly the latest email newsletter talks about this years plaque and sheds a little light on the issue:

At the end of February, we close the list of names to be added to the Winter Service Plaque and send them to our technical partner 3M who will manufacture the special, lightweight display. “The word ‘plaque’ makes this sound like a piece of carved wood from the school hall, but there is no way that the Civil Aviation Authority would allow anything like that to fly,” explains engineering director Andrew Edmondson. “People sometimes ask us why it took so long to fly the names from the restoration campaign and the answer is that it proved a lot more complicated than we first thought.”

Several different types of plaque were originally proposed, but to meet the CAA’s requirements they would have had to be designed, tested and certificated as a modification to the aircraft at a cost of more than £10,000. Painting the names was rejected as it would be difficult to keep them looking attractive. The solution was to work with innovation company 3M to develop a lightweight film that could be printed with the names and then applied to one of the bomb-bay doors.

As for a close up of the plaque, well I’ve never seen one but maybe if you contact VttS they could tell you if you’re listed as I imagine they must have had some sort of list with the names that went to the printers. 🙂

That Save the Vulcan website seems a bit out of date, especially as it says they’ve raised 1M in 8 days! 😮

Anyone reading that would probably think they’ve got enough money and not realise it was referring to last years appeal, and if you go to pledge it comes up with a page not found error.

Surely a link to the official website would have been a much better option? :rolleyes:

anyway back in the real world

Saucepans

Blue Max, hindsight is a wonderful thing!

No-one knew that the weekend weather at Hurn would turn out to be so bad, as a few days before it was forecast to be favourable. It really was untypical and the fact it lasted for both days of the weekend was extremely unfortunate.

As I was told, the Vulcan team used Hurn as they were offered the use of one of the Cobham hangars to do some work before the weekends displays, which is why they flew there on the Thursday evening.
Obviously there was no point in wasting fuel to go back to Brize when they were due to display at B/mth and Shoreham over both days. I don’t really see that as bad planning.

As for serviceability, there was only one issue all season with a brake unit that went faulty, and surely you should realise that all aircraft go u/s from time to time.

Sorry, but a great many people were disappointed that weekend due to the weather. Just be grateful you actually had an airshow with some sun and some flying because we didn’t!

What ARE you talking about?:confused:

Exactly what I was thinking, albeit my thoughts had ‘the’ followed by ‘****’ in it! 😀

A bunch of drunken pervs letching at a stripper is hardly a good comparison to watching an old plane displaying at a family airshow. :p

The volunteers with buckets idea is flawed as you simply wouldn’t make enough money to cover the display from voluntary public donations.

Not to mention a good deal of people will rightly conclude that their paying for an entrance ticket means they shouldn’t have to further dip into their pockets for a display they thought they’d already paid to watch.

Blimey, Hurn…that’s encouraging! And then IF they reach the target is the pressure off until the New year? They need about a million a year, don’t they, for all the running and maintenance costs?

Well as I understand it (which means I could be very wrong :p) the £400,000 was the shortfall they had in the budget, and the rest was (or will be) covered by other commercial activities, so I think that if the money is forthcoming now, then there wouldn’t be a need for another funding plea in the New year.

Like I said, that’s only how I understand things, but I wouldn’t be very impressed if they suddenly piped up in March saying they need another £x to fly next season.

So does this mean that the Vulcan only has another 3 to 4 years of fatigue life left on it or is it until the next major servicing.
Does anyone know.

Yes, there’s the fatigue life and also engine cycles to consider. I believe four years is about the max they can hope for currently, but probably more like two or three years if they can get funding.

I’ve heard there’s possibly one more mod they could do to the leading edge of the wing that would add some more life, but it would be very expensive, and then you’ve got to consider that the engines would probably be nearing their max cycles anyway.