509 is indeed safe and well. And the cockpit should now be re-equipped with the control column and instruments I gave them…

Another scruffy looking set of tail feathers…

I have a seemples, blood-free way for our mighty Argentina to take the Falklands, Senor Queso Grande.
Simply Email all members of HM Armed Forces on ‘Las Malvinas’ and tell them they are to be made redundant. Then we walk in.
Well, it’s what their own MOD do…
:diablo:

Another large pair…

…of 4-bladed props that is! :p

Oh look another tug!

Brian driving YAM’s tug, as seen from the Victor. Towing us back in after Thunder Day, Oct ’10

Of course not, we believe you.
I was smiling much yesterday, sat in the Victor watching Nimrod Mate being blown over by his own aircraft! :diablo:

Update, 13/02/2011

As you may have guessed from the previous posts Yorkshire Air Museum once more reverberated to the sounds of the big jets yesterday!
Some of us awoke on time (unlike Benyboy!) and ventured to YAM slightly apprehensive of what the weather Gods were intending to chuck at us. After the mandatory bacon sarnie and coffee, it was to the Jets…

The Artouste went back in last week, nice to see it back in it’s home

However we feared its stay would only be temporary, as a test run after fitting last week revealed an oil leak. This had been worked on in the week, so it was fingers crossed…
The Nimwits were busy racing around doing various odd jobs on their warm-up act for the main event (which was the Victor, obviously!) Including theft of catering size seives from the NAAFI it seems…

Incidentally we did wonder why they put the FOD catchers on over the blanks…!
After some prep work on the Victor lunch was declared. Then it was all hands on deck to de-bung and get Lindy ready to go. Steve, Rich and myself did the intake checks. Below, the front of our no.2 engine

and the view out from its intake

WIth the rain holding off and the Volunteer Fire Crew (without whom we couldn’t do any running; thanks guys) standing by, The Nim then prepared to run

I’m sure Nimrod Mate will tell in more depth of how their run went, but apparently it was all good. Kimberley even indulged in a touch of exhibit rearranging… 😉

Then it was our turn. As the Nimrod shut down we’d got our Houchin warmed up and ground power on Lindy. Crew for the day was; Left seat Steve Pepper, Right seat Andre, AEO Rick, and myself on 6th seat sitting in, observing, attempting to learn, and generally enjoying the experience. John ‘apple pie’ Hawkridge on external comms, everyone else monitoring.
Ready to go…

Ground power on

Rick busy AEO’ing

The plan was to get the Artouste up and running to see if the oil leak was resolved, exercise the hydraulics then (in order to not destroy the fence) run each main engine one at a time. The Artouste lit nicely (literally I’m told, there was a good flame from the exhaust apparently) and is now generating elastitrickery as it should. Unfortunately however, it also generated the oil leak, so it looks like back out and replace o-rings next weekend. Oh well…
Back to yesterday’s doings. The flaps were exercised a couple of times
(steve tapping a reluctant indicator- just after I took the shot it stopped fibbing!)

As were the airbrakes. Nose wheel steering was ‘given a wiggle’ too. All went well so we went ahead and lit each engine in turn. All have come through their 4 month hibernation perfectly fine, and each lit first time with good p’s and t’s. After a couple of minutes idling to get settled down, each engine was run up to 60/70% before shut down. Rich did sterling work scuttling around underneath clearing each collector box in turn.
Steve on the starters

No.1 running…

…and no.3

After all had been exercised we shut down, satisfied faces all round. We’ve got to drop the Artouste out again, but we should be able to drop it, change the o-rings and put it back in all next Sunday hopefully.

After a brew break, the rain came in so, after tidying and replacing all the bungs we called it a day.

Overall a successful day, thanks to those who braved the elements to see us, it really does make it worthwhile when we’ve got people to show the fruits of all our hard work off to.
Hope to see more of you next month for the next one! 😀