Many thanks RG for commenting, the one great problem with forums and social media etc is the lack of comment and first hand info from those involved, which leads in turn to rumours and speculation. It’s posts like yours that help to keep things civil and well informed. 

FL at Sywell should be a very interesting experience, yes Dux was great but a change of scenery and display axis etc could work wonders. I was last at a Sywell show in 2015 and had a great time, the place certainly has period atmosphere.

As one of the “silent followers” of this thread, I thought I’d better pop-up and say that I do follow this thread and enjoy it very much. Many thanks for everything you and the Stirling team are doing.

Forum traffic has certainly taken a tumble since the infamous update, and I’m here far less often than I used to be. 

There seem to be a large number of Key refugees over on UKAR, you could perhaps put a sister thread on there?

Wow, the time flies! I almost went to the BoB show in 2000 but plans changed at last minute and I passed my ticket to someone else, who then showed me lots of pics of just how great show was. Doh!

Loved ‘983 in that Piece of Cake scheme, even if it wasn’t historically correct. If my numbers came up, I’d love to put NH238 back in the air in those colours. 

The Halifax had several problems in its earlier forms, the nacelles and many of the exhaust styles for the Merlin installation were very draggy (the aircraft as a whole was a bit draggy too). Added to this were prop vibration, poor exhaust flame damping and those famously dangerous triangular fins. This doesn’t cover all the problems, but gives some idea. It’s enlightening to note that loss rates on Merlin Halifax squadrons were worse than those of the Stirling, and it’s only the record of the later Halifax models that saves the type from being remembered as the worst of the RAF heavy bombers.

There were refinements as production went along, so by the time the switch had been made to Hercules power with the Mk.III, the airframe was in a much better state to make use of the extra power and the aircraft was aerodynamically safe to fly.

Very late in the war the Hercules 100, with a redesigned intake and surpercharger, became available and these were fitted to Mk.VI Halifax. Combined with the extended wing tips, this made for a leap in ceiling and overall performance. 

Done!!

The general consensus in various places is that this project was a very comfy job that was dragged on as long as possible, end result was lots of money for relatively little progress. How Lufthansa kept paying into this project over so many years and not realising what was going on is hard to understand.

End results:

An airline that was backing historic aircraft in a major way has completely backed out of flying any of their aircraft.

The Starliner itself was cut up for transport after the project was abandoned and will certainly never fly again.

Lots of really good spare parts were gathered together for the project, many of which were simply binned when the project was abandoned.

Just imagine what that kind of money could have accomplished in the right hands, it’s sickening…

Yes please SandyK, always of interest.