Does anyone know the weight on the nose wheel when the Vulcan in in a three point attitude? Someone from the Vulcan to the Sky team must surely know from C of G calculations? It would give NEAM an idea of the load lifting ability of any crane used to lower the aircraft.

Hi, if you’ve not already done it, a quick back of the envelope calculation.

According to the AP, the empty weight of a fully kitted out vulcan is 100,757lb. Yours might be a few hundred pounds lighter from removed equipment, but then you’ve got the bomb rack and front fuel tank.

The C of G is between 142″ and 156.9″ aft of the datum.
The nose leg is 175″ fore of the datum (roughly)
The main legs are 180″ aft of the datum.

Assuming 319’s within the C of G limits (once the snow’s melted), the weight on the nose leg will be between 2,977kg and 4,898kg.

Does that sound sensible?

Of course, feel free to post it wherever.

It’s a rough estimate, you might want to check to see whether there’s an official version in the APs. Also it only holds if you’re within the CoG limits.

I think its a credit to the design team that the crane only registered 1.5tonnes at any one time. Even with a lot of kit removed the C of G must be all but perfect.

If she was within the C of G there would have been at least 3 tonnes on the nose leg. That there’s less shows that the C of G must be aft of the rear limit.

Perhaps there has been more equipment taken out of the nose than the tail.

Agreed but, I make the point that 60 years ago, during what seems now to have been the golden era of British aircraft engineering and production and given the variety then in service, we apparently did so much more with so much less. Or, was that an illusion ?

I think we did more with more back then, according to this graph (which I’ve not checked in any way so happy to be proved wrong):

http://ourworldindata.org/data/war-peace/military-spending/

No news on the tri-star fleet??

According to this article a company is looking in to buying them for operation. The one in the static park at the last open day had a US civilian registration painted on.

http://airheadsfly.com/2015/05/22/paramilitarization-gives-raf-tristars-new-chance/

And a press release from the company:

http://www.pr.com/press-release/620065

Here are a few more photos of it.

https://www.facebook.com/steven.hancock.92/media_set?set=a.10152554474346690.1073741867.566601689&type=1

Very glad it ended well for the pilot. I dropped the camera when he crossed the threshold with his gear back up.