How much is 558 going to cost an airshow organiser? I really dont see the need for a £5 increase, certainly at places like waddington. A £1 increase would give them an extra £250,000. If we go down this route, then would we be prepared to pay an extra £20 per person on top of the current prices? I mean, it’s only £5 for the vulcan, oh and an extra £5 for a shackleton, and £5 for a victor, and lets pay another £5 for well, take your pick… lightning or comet? Suddenly Mr and Mrs Smith will be paying the thick end of £200 for a day out to show little Jonny and his brother a few aircraft. Or have I got the wrong end of the stick?

Looking at it that way, then yes, then it would get expensive, but an airworthy Shack/Lightning/Comet and Victor in the UK isn’t realistically going to happen in my lifetime… An extra £250,000? The airshows I am thinking of aren’t going to attract 250,000 bods, Vulcan or no Vulcan…

Whatever happens, if people want to see a Vulcan or any other airframe fly at an air display, somebody has to pay for it. As these events are not exactly charities, if the aircraft has an expensive appearance cost, why shouldn’t it be passed down? However, I fully agree that this shouldn’t just be an automatic surcharge to the admission due to the Vulcan being there. Either that, or do organisers slim down the display participants to have something like a Vulcan there, yet keep ticket prices lower? Simple fact of life here is that we can’t get something like this for nothing….

Unfortunately, large and complex aircraft have large and complex funding issues, and airshows are just another revenue source. We cannot solely rely on sponsors to keep them in the air, they have to earn their keep, or have very generous benefactors…. The Sea Vixen is springing to mind at the moment, but I’ll stop now in case I am catching ‘Foot-In-Mouth’ disease! 😉

Kind Regards
Scotty

AA’s Shackleton, or the other Shack at Coventry (Sorry guys – its late and I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the owning group! 😮 ) would be technically feasible, but whether the CAA would have a big downer on it remains to be seen.

I’d reckon the shacks will be in the same category as the victors – weren’t they in a need for resparring for to give any meaningful period of operation after retirement? Can’t see there being many spare Shack spars lying around…

New record?

Would this be a record for the most people viewing a thread at one time – 75 at the moment!

As for Sky news, who really gives a toss about Bhutto? Totally overkill – that’s all they’ve had on for the past 45 mins…:mad:

Fingers crossed…

Bit of a beast…

I do believe that Mk.2 WL796 was seen at at least one Farnborough air display with the Saro lifeboat underneath it, and was flying by with 3 griffons feathered – the only one turning was port outer…..

Who needed Nomads anyway? Heh heh!:diablo:

Regards,
Scotty

Slow but steady wins the race

I’m not knocking it but it was originally expected to fly in time for the falklands flypast in july, then they said it would be waddington. The time to first flight has allegedly been “a couple of weeks” for about 4 months now.

Anybody who knows anything about old machinery will know that once you find a problem, and fix it, it usually means inspecting at the very least other components, or moreso, things sometimes have to be replaced as they get broken.

I remember when I worked as an avionics tech repairing an old ADF receiver (King KR85 if anybody remembers!) which had a complex gearing and sliding switch for tuning the receiver through the 3 frequency bands. These switches were prone to being intermittent through wear and dirt, and that radio would work one minute, but fail the next… due to the lack of new switches, it was a fiddly job to ensure all were clean and aligned… this one was required in a week, it ended up in our workshop for 3 months….

The point being, is that XH558 is an old beast, and I am sure the people working on it, no matter how well they have planned, through no fault of their own have discovered other not so obvious problems that may have come as a result of something else being changed. Add to the fact that they will have to jump through the loops for certification, I don’t mind if it is 4 months or 4 years late (though i hope not!) as long as it works and works well for as long as possible.

To get it wrong will be catastrophic for the project, so taking their time is in my opinion the correct thing to do….

🙂

Perhaps we can persuade some of the more naive urban explorers to go onto the range when the red flag is up – the more the better! Then it might protect things like the Long Marston collection from the ned element…:dev2:

What about the Shack?

Just a question when I was looking at Jon’s photos..

If they are needing to move the Prince, how’s the future looking for Camlobe’s cockpit section? I know it has sat in the open for a few years already, but if it is going to be preserved, you’d have thought a tarpaulin over it might have been a good idea at the least…

Good work Jon by the way!

Scotty

Awesome restoration here! Wonder if they would ever consider restoring it to run??
http://buccsociety.conforums.com/index.cgi?board=restorations&action=display&num=1190548367

Don’t think so Peter, if I recall correctly XK532 is at the Highland Aviation Museum, next to Inverness Airport (Dalcross). I used to work offshore with the owner, James Campbell, and if I recall correctly, there is not the room or the finances to get this aircraft running.

It is a museum worth seeing, and is done to a high standard.

Regards,
Scotty