David,

Would it be too much to ask you to use a little common sense here?

Do you really think that the entire flight, and everything around it, is going to be conducted under a ‘David Copperfield’ cloak of secrecy?

Do you think that we, the engineers are going to be signing confidentiality clauses, and denying all knowledge of working Vulcan bombers?

Have a word with yourself. Most of the reasons for the First Flight date being kept quiet, have been raised in this thread. Seriously, have you ever been to Bruntingthorpe and travelled on the surrounding roads? How long do you think they would take to become blocked? Do you imagine that only one or two people would wish to drive to Brunty to see 558 take to the skies? How well do you think that kind of a situation would go down with the local residents? What if things go U/S on the day, that’s an awful lot of angry people who’ve lost a days wages. Should you decide to come down, off your own back however, well that’ another matter entirely, and I think that as everyone else has pointed out, as soon as that entrance hatch shuts and 558 lines up, everyone will know about it one way or another.

The list goes on and on and on, without even broaching the safety aspect, but after another 16 hour day, I really haven’t got the energy to be entering a totally pointless argument, with someone who would appear to be letting his own personal bitterness, get in the way of completely legitimate and glaringly obvious reasons for TVOC’s silence on the issue.

For pitys sake, dry your eyes princess.

Flipflopman

Chin up flipflopman! Don’t let the ******s get to you. The majority of us can’t wait to see the wee beastie fly! Yeah, the management have made some errors, but don’t they always anywhere you go? The engineers (I know one of them, and I nearly was one myself had it not been for a Lancaster..) are as good as you will find anywhere. You guys are doing a top job. Keep it up, and ignore the party-poopers on here. The bitterness will be forgotten when the delta wedge flies over. (Do I qualify for a free raffle ticket?)

sounds like a good (expensive) swap in theory. What is the Australian connection with the Heron prototype (otherthan the fact that its there) ?

Are the Conditions of both airframes equivalent?

How many Aussie Dragons are in oz?…. I think the question is : would it be in the Australian’s interest to swap?….

eh? I’ve worked on more restos than I can remember & that’s not how it works. When an aircraft is “straight out of rebuild” there shouldn’t be more than 1 or 2 minor squawks unless the guys doing the work were a bunch of clueless idiots… Who the heck do you work for?:eek:

Unless he’s referring to airline mechanics….! I’ve lost count of the number of times we have spent ages on an A or C check, fixing known snags, changing components (Airbus Undercarriage legs mainly!), only to have something completely different break just before its test flight. I hate sod’s law.

Apparently at Glasgow this week, the techies in a certain national airline hangar were changing an engine as a matter of routine, when the crane snapped. Oops – CFM all over the floor….

I’m sure the post by Rambo is just an exaggeration of what I’ve said above.. well, I hope it is. Remind me to never fly in an aircraft which has been ‘restored’ by his company though…. Most snags in that level of maintenance should be discovered and fixed prior to flight. I’m pretty confident that the only things amiss when 558 flies will be silly things like bulbs, maybe an instrument too (bloody tempramental things….). Faults can occur any time, just like DB said, but after such painstaking work, I would not expect much to happen during the flight.

Another terrible waste of a life….. condolences to all the people involved. which aircraft was it?

I have some late 80’s early 90’s Finningly ones, and some late 70’s early 80’s Riat. I even have one from Teeside International Airshow (1983 or 4 I think….)

Fairey Flycatcher, and the second (solo aircraft j-7582) could be a Gloster Grebe… Thats what my money is on without consulting the books…..