Sky High I quite like the image too but I’m no expert with Photoshop. I just did what I could mostly through trial and error! The annoying thing is that I received a copy of the book today and the layout people have blown it up rather larger so the quality is spoiled and it looks pretty rough on the cover which is disappointing!

Regarding the book, it’s basically a fairly concise look at the whole project from start to finish, but aimed at the truth this time rather than the endless myths which have floated around for years. Some of the information will doubtless surprise some readers, especially if they’ve adhered to the old “Denis Healey destroyed TSR2” story. Hopefully I’ve put the record straight and explained what the project was all about, how the aircraft was to be used, and why it was ultimately abandoned.

Inkworm I can’t see any images either! Something’s wrong!:p

As mentioned above, we’re revisiting comments we made or read a long time ago. The sad thing is that nothing much seems to have changed. Pleming is still doing a good (but not great) job and paying himself a salary out of all proportion to the work he’s doing – especially when the project is a charity. Likewise, the people who are actually doing the hands-on work of getting and keeping 558 into the air are receiving far smaller monetary rewards for their efforts. You can only reach one conclusion from all this. Pleming is (and has been) milking the project. If that’s the case, then regardless of the success of the project, the guy doesn’t deserve anyone’s admiration or support.

Trouble is, there’s nothing anyone can do about it. One either throws more money at the project in the hope that some of it will actually support the aircraft, or one objects to the whole set-up and pays nothing, resulting in no Vulcan. There doesn’t seem to be any obvious way of registering an objection to Pleming and even if there was, I imagine that most of the people who have donated to the project would be far too “British” to ever believe that Pleming’s motives were anything other than genuine.

Perhaps the only thing which does amaze me is how the aviation press (and the wider media) have stoically reported on the project for years without asking any questions about how it is run. Sadly, aviation journalism seems to have very little association with genuine journalism these days. If it did, then a story like this would have “had legs” by now. A leader of a very public charity project raking in huge sums of money in exchange for doing very little that couldn’t be done far less cheaply… and yet…

The Vulcan is popular amongst a small portion of the population. Iconic amongst an even smaller portion.

Have to disagree with you on that one. I know from personal experience of publishing figures that the Vulcan is a very (and I mean very!) popular subject. It generates interest far beyond aviation enthusiast circles and it’s one of those rare machines that a typical “man in the street” can often identify – in the same class as Spitfires and Concordes. I wouldn’t kid myself that any aeroplane is of that much interest to the wider public and I agree with you in that respect, but it would be a tad misleading to suggest that the Vulcan is anything but immensely popular.

As for whether one could ever truly regard the Vulcan as “iconic”, I think it certainly should be considered as such… but then convincing the population of this notion really should be the task of TVOC’s spurious “education” role for which they were paid handsomely by HLF!:p

The CAA will let you fly a harrier, BUT you must prove that it is safe to do so.

Indeed, the CAA would let you fly any aircraft, but only if you can prove it is safe so to do. This is where I came in! Effectively, that means the CAA will allow you to fly any aircraft that they perceive to be safe enough. They might dress-up their position differently but when you strip-away all the rules, dogma, regulations, advice, data, statistics and everything else, that is what you’re ultimately left with. It’s their decision, no matter how they care to present it.

But yes, as I said before, I agree entirely that operating a Harrier would be a very risky and expensive venture but even though I’d be inclined to say that maybe it would present too great a risk to authorise, I still think there could (in theory) be suitable regulations to make a Harrier’s operation safer. As I said before, given that it is the jet-borne elements of the aircraft’s perfromance that must presumably be the most risky, surely non-conventional flight could be permitted in sterile areas? The comment about Ramstein previously isn’t relevant – that was a completely different situation.

However, as Bruce and others have said, the very idea is too expensive to contemplate. It’s never going to happen. To operate “exotic” aircraft like the Harrier one needs a country with a completely different mind set.