Following WR963 on Facebook I was troubled to see the post about the RAC man. I was heartened to see people offering their photographs up to prove that he ‘phone it in’, but the whole thing seemed like dirty laundry being aired. You need to monitor and moderate your social media content better than this. Some petty squabble between the old Shackleton team and the new needs to be kept offline, and your content on Facebook or wherever has to be synced to what is posted on here, UKARSE, or whatever other forums you post to.

The fact an RAC patrolman had his livelihood placed in jeopardy isn’t what I’d call petty. Its rather nasty, and vindictive toward someone that wasn’t/isn’t part of things past or present. Why try to ruin his life?

I post on here updates as to the condition and work on the aircraft. No gossip, no mess, no craziness, no petty squabble. Just spanner work. That is what will continue as and when my day job stops getting in the way of me working on aeroplanes. As to what gets posted on Facebook, thats up to the admins on there and if they choose to sign up to this forum.

I do however wonder if 963 will ever return to the air. All I’ve seen for the last couple of years is endless tinkering, with the engines being babied into life and various faults and niggles being dealt with along the way.

I guess you missed the taxy runs then. The endless tinkering is called maintenance, and the engines aren’t babied into life they tend to start pretty well, other than the usual foibles found when water gets in. But all you see isn’t all there is. Keeping the aircraft going is one branch of things and it brings in interest and support, with the airworthy components being laid away for when they will be needed. Things like engines, propellers, hydraulic components, a couple of new tail fins, fuel tanks, control surfaces…. and the plethora of other bits. Trying to get all the original equipment manufacturers to rebuild parts that haven’t been available for donkey’s years. Researching fatigue lives of components. Digging through fatigue records. Chipping away the red tape and the mountain of work bit by bit by bit. But in between all this we keep her running, keep letting people on board, and up close, and keep the enthusiasm and smiles even in the face of continued adversity.

It looks like a fun project, but I’m not convinced that, with all the will the world, the jump to getting her to fly can be made given the current situation.

We can but try. None of us are willing to let WR963 fade away yet, and the work done is too much to abandon now, just because it sometimes seems a bit too much.

If absolutely nothing else, next time you post a close-up photo of the nose, clean the lichen off first!

Its on the list, but not vital. Being on grass, it comes back in a month. But hey, if it bugs you that much you want to volunteer to do it, thats cool.

TwinOtter, Oxcart, TonyT, Paul, TrolleyAux, WL747 and all – thanks for the support guys, the ride’s not over yet. 😉

Regards,

Rich