Apparently flying starts at 1pm.
The lancaster may put in an appearance, as may the Vulcan. The blades are booked and various American hardware may do a flypast.
A16 ship formation of Apaches is also planned as well.

22 Squadron had a families day at Wattisham yesterday. I had an extremely close encounter with that Yak afterwards and thought what a thoroughly nice aeroplane it was. 😀

I don’t know, there was a lot of smoke coming out the back of it and it must be real handful as he was all over the sky with it! 😀

If this was in any doubt the project team had ample opportunity to notify the thousands that travelled specifically to see her.. If it was going to be a close run thing again this could have been communicated and folk could make their own judgement call.

Can you imagine the moaning if The vulcan lot issued a press release along the lines of ” we’re not sure if we’re going to make it this weekend”….

Any no show by the vulcan is going to lead to moaning, if it subsequently turned up you’ll have the lot that cancelled moaning!

I’m not sure what the structural tests were that were needed on 603, i’m assuming it was some sort of NDT. This needs operators do it, they have to be booked or given notice, so the fact that 603 isn’t dismantled enough for the tests to take place could well have been foreseen early last week, so it does seem to be bad management not to have issued some sort of news a good few days ago.

Battle damage repair methods are worked out long before hand. By the time it hits the flight line there are more specs than you can shake a stick at for how it is to be done and what parts can have what kind of damage repaired.

You’re wrong there. You’ll have a basic battle damage repair scheme for metal and composite structures, but for permanent repairs to load bearing structures you usually have to go back to the manufacturer or design authority each time (unless they make it a generic repair).

Having said that, the post you were referring to was wrong as well, there are plenty of repairs out the for composite aircraft parts, but doing these in the field can be rather awkward.

As regards preservation, the Belfast was saved when the type finshed service with the RAF. Perhaps they will save a Herk then.

The RAF have nothing to do with those scrapped in the desert as they were traded to Lockheed against new C-130J and a few others were sold to other Air Forces. Some damaged or expired aircraft were stripped by the RAF for spares. The RAF have been recycling parts or selling aircraft not wasting them.

The scrapped aircraft probably had the airframe componants saved by Lockheed if worth it, but the aircraft themselves would be of little interest as the C-130K was Anglicised with each new aircraft in the 60’s flown to Marshall and then stripped of systems and instruments and that being replaced with British equipment. So in that respect they are a special version.

I think the K is a C-130E with the engines of the H and British equipment.

Garry

Don’t forget that the RAF ‘K’ model is pretty unique in the world in that it had the RAF tie down system for cargo. This meant the aircraft was structurally quite different, and it would be very expensive to convert to ‘normal’ spec.

Some may call it cynicism – but I suspect the truth of the matter is that it’s not a Spitfire/Hurricane/Mustang/Sea Fury/Bearcat/………………..and the list of ‘warbirds’ could continue ad nauseam. It’s just a boring old civil aeroplane – and foreign too – for which there’s no significant market as ‘rich men’s toys’ and there are too few people wanting to see the like at airshows for it to be able to generate anything like enough in display fees to make restoration to flying condition commercially viable! This leaves only those who are both well heeled and have a passion for the unusual – and there are precious few of those around these days! Put simply – there’s no business case to restore a Drover to flying condition or, probably, at all!

I’m suprised the Vulcan hasn’t been blamed yet! 😀

Perhaps a Williams F22 put on a display….