I believe the GAL 28 was fitted with a single Hurculese engine, originally built by the General Aircraft Company before it was amalgamated with Blackburn to form the Blackburn & General which of course ended up as Blackburn Aeroplane and Motor company, I don’t know if it ever entered service or how many were built, Not found a photo of one either, supposed to have had a variable wing area too,

I would be very careful about anything to do with the Saudies, they can be very, VERY, tetchy about things you and I would consider common or garden everyday nonsense, The Suadi Flag or ensign actually comes in a number of forms but the original flag as applied to the Lightnings is reserved as the Royal Suadi ensign and has applied to it the’shahada’ and as such it ‘Cannot’ under Saudi law be flown or displayed by a civilian, a similar row blew up over the world cup footballs which some wag had printed with the Royal ensign complete with Shahada, a Big no no as Muslims rightly complained that this was an insult too thier religious beliefs and the Saudis took offence because it is reseverved for Royal Military use only, So if you wish to apply a Saudi ensign to a retired Lightning I suggest you do so, but in place of the Shahada you apply a single gold plam over two crossed sabers, this is considered to be a civil marking and is used a lot.

Simple case of money and logistics, if the monies there and we already know there are people who can do the work, it will get done and a Shackelton will grace our skies once again, Bae are after all a business.

Yup, same here too, seems the site has been well and truly hijacked and is currently usless, however looking around I located a few sites with the odd pikkie or two. Guess untill they clear the fleas out of the site we will get no more information.

http://www.warbirdregistry.org/lancregistry/lanc-nx664.html

http://lancasterfm159.freeservers.com/images/lanctitle.jpg

http://groupeaeronefs.free.fr/even22_fichiers/pages/page21.htm

Bin there done that, TVOC crew has been regular visitors for some time now recovering parts as needs be, power went off some weeks ago, vids of the event on TVOC website, sorry to say nothing moch more can be done for 603 than reflect on her contribution to various current Vulcan projects and also on the reasons she arrived at this sad point in history, lets just hope there will be so little left of her in the end that those respo0nsible will have to pay dearly to have the remains carted away. 😡

As 708 was flown into Duxford with the intention of her being a flying exhibit, my guess that on arrival she was in fair condition, the decision to ground her on arrival at the time was a suprise to a lot of people, but I would think cost might have played a part there, still it’s good to see the airframe is recieving attention as it was getting too look pretty tatty from years outside