Short of imposing a 3 or 4 mile radius sterile “safety zone” no waiting/no parking area around the airfield, open only to legitimate residents or airshow ticket holders, what can you do about it? And how would you close/police the many footpaths and rights of way that would be affected?

Perhaps if freeloaders were aware of the risk they place themselves in (look how close some freeloaders were to the A26 crash at Biggen Hill many years ago, and to the Hurricane accident at Shoreham more recently) then they may think twice, but I suspect it would take a serious accident involving injury to a field full of freeloaders, and a clear ruling of “no liability” for the unfortunate airshow and pilot concerned, to make enterprising farmers more reluctant to entertain freeloaders at the farm’s risk, and for freeloeaders themsleves to realise that they accept full liability if the worst were to happen.

Trouble is, in todays world, the media would still savage the show organisers for “…not protecting innocent spectators from those dangerous rickety old stunt planes…”.

Short of ensuring the organisers and local landowners display “You are here at your own risk and accept full liability for any outcome, however unfortunate (including personal injury or even death)” – perhaps with a graphic shot of the A26 impact at Biggen ? – in all regular freeloading viewpoints then what else can show organisers do? Or to maybe organisers could run a loudspeaker van round them giving verbal warnings of the potential risk.

Maybe airshow organisers should instead concentrate on making the “ground display” very attractive, and better vale for money as a family day out, but that risks ever more blaring funfair music ruining enthusisats video recordings…

And, of course, access to modern social media helps spread the word as to where good freeloading spots can be found….

I fear freeloading is unlikely to be preventable, but perhaps organisers could do more to promote the risks of watchign from unauthorised places. But, even if there is a risk, I suspect that even if a display aircraft did get into trouble, most (all?) pilots might well put the safety of the freeloaders ahead of their own if they possibly can…

Perhaps employing a crop sprayer loaded with harmless, but foul smelling, liquid, and a few spray passes over the well frequented freeloader fields for a few shows might deter the non-payers?

Not the first time the “wrong” engine has been shut down by mistake, and unfortunately it probably won’t be the last either.

However thorough the training, and however experienced the crew, there is always the chance that human error will creep in. At least it seems they did identify their mistake and try to correct it, unfortunately they ran out of time/height/airspeed.

Let’s hope procedures and/or training etc are improved as a result. The accident was a tragedy, but it would be even worse if no good came of it in the longer term…

Having had the chance to work wth traditional “film” based photographic processes, and access to dark rooms, enlargers and print developing equipment back in my senior school/sixth-form days I can confirm that it is relatively easy to “doctor” prints (and/or negatives or colour slide images). Artefacts can be hand painted on to prints, and the modified print re-photographed, artefacts can be added to the negatives (though I suspect this was a rarer form of manipulation due to the small image to work with) and it is also relatively easy to incorporate portions of one negative into a print made with/from another negative to add things into the overall composition.

Artefacts can be removed by over-painting them, or by physically scratching or cutting them out of the negative, often leaving a “black patch” such as is seen on many wartime images of aircraft when serial numbers or new weaponry was deemed “secret”. Government censors literally took a razor blade to the original negative and cut the secret item out of the image.

Even as a ham-fisted amateur it was easy to make this sort of change, albeit leaving clear signs of the “modification”, so a professional “image fettler” in WW2 would have no problem in producing a much more convincing end product.

Sorry to dissillusion the younger “IT-reliant” generation, but digital imaging and image manipulation software (photoshop et al) rarely offers anything that a professional photographer and/or his lab could not have achieved even in the days of wet-film photography – all modern IT does is open up the ability to capture and manipulate images to the masses, and allow such changes to be made to images ever more easily then before.

Nice to see there are still a couple of Aero 145’s still about. There was at least one in this country at one time but I have no idea what happened to it.

I seem to remember an Aero 145 swung off the runway nd/or ground-looped at Blackbushe a few years back and may have been damaged beyond economic repair :apologetic:… no doubt a trawl of the web /AAIB accident reports would find details.

P.S. Nice photos Trak-Tor

It’s the Le Mans 24hr race this weekend. Full coverage on Eurosport. (Doesn’t get a mention on the BBC.)

I spotted in the TV listings mag that one of the free-to-view channels (“Quest”?) has a number of live broadcasts of the event, including race start and finish, and a number of slots during the race. I presume each slot will start with a summary of points of interest that have happened since their last broadcast…

I seem to remember it was also streamed on t’internet last year too…

Paul F

Walmart have closed five stores with six hours notice for ‘plumbing repairs’ for six months in the south of the US. The coincidence is that there is a military exercise called ‘Jade Helm 15’ which lasts for two months in this area and has the conspiracy theorists in full flow.

Closure of major retail outlets for six months to resolve “plumbing” problems does seem a bit OTT, they could knock down and completely rebuild a superstore from the ground up in that time scale, but it does seem to need a great overdose of paranoia to link a few long-term store closures to impending imposition of widespread martial law, extraction of “agitators”, and/or full blown ISIS assaults on mainland USA etc etc …..

Of course, the truth could be somewhere between the two extremes….?

Maybe some Walmart Stores are being closed to allow “modifications” to make them suitable for use as some sort of Military operations centre in time of need/crisis?

As with all conspiracy theories, a creative mind has taken a tiny thread of truth, stretched it byond all reason, added one or two drops of plausibility (e.g. closures coinciding with a major military exercise) and then spun it into something far fetched, but those who wish to see shadows behind every bush can rarely see where reality stops and “make-believe” takes over.

Still, when they start wholesale “chem trailing” over the whole of the South West USA as Jade Helm starts, then I guess
the doubters will know its for real 😀

If it ended up at Brunty (who have already said no thanks) then, to echo your sentiments, just how accessible will XH558 be to the public on most days?

Hi Meddle,

Have Brunty said “no” in terms of it being gifted to the site for current group(s) to care for or “No” to it being retired there full stop?

When I suggested Brunty I was not suggesting XH558 was left for anyone other than VTTS to preserve (or whatever VTTS becomes/sets up post her “retirement”)…or that it shoudl expect to be housed int he hangar used to restore it to flight…given the limited resources of volunteer groups, adding the need to care for a Vulcan would probably not be seen as a very welcome gift by many, but the establishment of an academy that trains engineers, and simultanously houses/cares for XH558 in a new-build (or relocated) unit on site may be a more attractive offer to Brunty’s operators?

I do accept that neither Brunty or Elvington is ideal, but the, nor it seems is the current plan.

I know the Southend example does live and run at a “regional airport” (reasonably happily?), and that Finningley is said to offer a similar scenario – albeit possibly with bonus of use of a hangar from the outset? But I do also wonder whether the long-term aim is really to preserve the airframe in perpetuity (or so far as is possible) as stated when HF was approached. Perhaps, as others have suggested, there were other agendas – for example maybe the “centre-piece of an academy” scheme was aimed at satisfying the “educational project” tick box on the HFL application form (without which HFL would probably not have allocated such generous funds to the project)?

I hope they are as committed to, and succesful at, preserving her as they were, against all the odds, to getting her airbourne and to keeping her airworthy for far longer than many of us expected. I am not knocking VTTS for their efforts, more expressing concerns that plans for her preservation seem a little less certain/well defined than many have perhaps expected, given we are now maybe only six months or so ( = twenty six weeks!?!) away from her last flight, and we all know how long any major project involving new building work, or setting up an educational institution (with the need for independent assessment and accreditation of course content etc), takes.

All I am suggesting is that if Finningley may not now seem to be as secure/viable an option as it seemed at the date of the original HLF funding application, then whether other options might now be considered if they offer a more viable long-term plan. As they have exceeded all forecasts in terms of flights made since restoration, maybe the funds that VTTS will be allocating to keeping her airborne this season might be better allocated towards sorting out a long term, “under cover”, final home?

As Plough says a few posts back, in reality, Elvington and Brunty may offer no more a secure option than Finningley, or than anywhere else :apologetic:.

The long term preservation of a grounded 111ft Tin Triangle is(was) always going to pose a major challenge.

I shall be very sad to see her finally grounded, but I will be even sadder if she slowly rots away because no real viable “end game” has been planned, and no workable solution can be found due to lack of detailled planning before she retired.

Thats (far more) than my two-penneth worth, so I’ll shut up and step back to allow others better qualified than myself to to carry on the discussion.

Over and out….

Paul F

If grounding is the only option at the end of this season , assuming engines don’t force an earlier conclusion, then I’d love to see her retired to somewhere with as secure a future as can be predicted in this day and age.

However (cautiously dons “Devil’s advocate” hat and coat), why “must” she be preserved?

Given she has seen many modifications, and much of her non-essential military equipment has long been removed, she doesn’t really (currently) represent a “true” picture of an “in service” Vulcan airframe, does she? Or have VTTS saved all the removed “gear” for re-installation post grounding?

So, given we already have a number of “grounded” Vulcans under cover, do we really need to preserve XH558 at all? Would not funds needed to support her “preservation” post-grounding be better spent preserving those, possibly more representative, examples already under cover?

I know the preserved, covered, examples are not “privately” owned like XH558, so transfer of funds is not as easy as it might be, but in principle, I am sure we all agree we cannot save every single airframe that is retired from service, and if ‘558 is destined for the smelter, even if in the longer term, then why not let it happen quickly, thus avoiding a long drawn out decay?

Of course, in order to gain Lottery Funding, there had to be some “long term” post-retirement plan, otherwise I doubt HFL could have justified allocating funds to her restoration to flight, but the apparent lack of strategic planning for the end-game at this point in time does seem a little worrying, but as others have said, no-one dreamt she would fly for so long, and no-one anticipated the gobal financial meltdown that happend along the way, so whatever the plans were ten or mor eyears ago, the playing field has almost certainly changed beyond expectations, so perhaps it is no suprise that the proposed “final solution” now seems less attractive, relevant, or secure, than it did when HFL applications was submitted.

I hate to say it, but we cannot preserve them all, and XH558 seems no more worthy of preservation than many others, and IMHO less so than say the “Black Buck” airframe at Waddington. …

(…removes Devils advocate hat and coat and runs for the doorway….)