Thanks chaps…still early days yet and there’s still a certain 26 foot blue boat to finish, but there’s a steady bit of Barra work ongoing too- there’s a pretty much finished full-span tailplane spar now too, again 100% Barracuda. It’s a big old beast, too!

Some media coverage of our fledgling Barracuda Project complete with some in-workshop video-

http://tyneandwear.sky.com/news/article/55942

Fascinating to see inside the Wellington- thanks for that! Those rivets on the Hampden are a bit iffy though aren’t they?

Massive Lancaster enthusiast as I am, I too would be slightly concerned about some bean-counter seeing NX611 flying as a reason to ground PA474…I’m really not convinced that the UK needs a second airworthy Lancaster.

We thought everybody might like a look at what we’ve been doing whenever we’ve had little bits of downtime between jobs on Bluebird…we’re proud to unveil the world’s only Fairey Barracuda starboard elevator!

This took two of us about a month to build…it’s a conglomeration of original and new build parts BUT! the newly made parts are made from…scrap Barracuda! Yup, see all those rib booms for example? They are made to the correct section from the original Fairey drawings from tattered old bits of Barracuda skinning etc, making the elevator 100% original Barracuda material…nifty huh? It’s very early days but we hope that we can build the entire aircraft like this- there’s certainly enough parts scattered about. Our friends at the FAAM have a good haul of bits, and then there’s some lovely bits laying on various hill and mountainsides…I’m convinced that there’s easily a complete Barracuda left in the world- we just need to sweep it up and weld it back together!

We’re coming on nicely with setting up a dedicated unit for the Barra Project, and we’re still happy to hear from anyone that can help in any way whatsoever.

I’ve got an airshows DVD somewhere that has the Mildenhall incident on.

Around that time I think there were a few incidents of the Lancaster having landing problems…there’s a Discovery Channel documentary which has an on-board sequence filmed from the mid upper turret as she was landing and did the same thing, and a subsequent sequence of her going up on jacks and being inspected, and the undercart being sent away for work while the then new OC BBMF (Rick Groombridge) subtly(!) mentions to someone that he’d been told by the powers that be that the BBMF had a priority when it comes to getting things hurried along through official channels. The guy replies something on the lines of yeah, you, the Red Arrows, and everyone else mate!

In the same programme Sqdn Ldr Groombridge says that the Lanc had been off the runway a few times and that he thought that they’d been landing it wrong, and how they’d talked to some of the old boys who said that only the show offs ever tried to 3-point them and that they usually got it wrong.

I also seem to recall comments on here from ex-BBMF people that some of the incidents were as much down to the pilots around the time…Squadron Leaders Patterson and Tomalin both having troubles with her I think. Tomalin never flew her as well as Mike Chatterton- I could usually tell who was flying her at shows before it was announced!

Can someone explain the Lancaster/Shackleton spar thing, they are different so how does one become machined to be the other?

They don’t. The same raw MATERIAL was used, left over from the Shack job.