Thanks for the messages of support so far chaps, it is appreciated.
There’s a ton of preliminary work to do which is why of late we’ve been working through the spares and sorting out where the archive is going to go. We’ve been steadily heading back towards the goal of flight for a few months but the Trustees have been understandably cautious. Then of course we were thrown a little by our friends at Coventry deciding to move to St Mawgan!
BlueRobin you are correct… Some years ago the engines on 963 were run weekly, but when the numbers in the team started dropping it became more difficult for them to keep things serviceable.
The decision was taken aound that time to try to start a return to flight and that was when all the original feasibility studies were done, which included having some BAE, Hawker Siddeley and ex Avro employees digging deep inside WR963’s structure. Things hit a brick wall though. There were several avenues that were missed or overlooked and people got a bit disillusioned. The plan got shelved, but the mountain of paperwork was kept rather than discarded.
Fast forward a few years, and through efforts by myself and Ben Nash we managed to get the numbers in the team up, and get the morale back. We went to the Trustees and pointed out the we already know the worst case scenario – which is replacement of the spar booms. Its been talked about since WL790 in 1994! In the time its taken since then the money could have been raised and the job done already, and its not as if its never been done before..
The feasibilty study indicates 5 years minimum to see it done. I’m looking forward to seeing how accurate that is. The big step is going to be the same one every other large project faces, which is finding the funding.
Regards,
Rich
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