Mike you will never see it while she is airworthy….

BBMF manage! But I know what you mean mate.

You know that Fluffy has been with the BBMF for the period in question?

I am also surprised at how cheap the BBMF is (however, there are no insurance costs for the BBMF, I believe!) – but it is of far greater significance than the Vulcan, and instead of being 1 aircraft, the BBMF operate nine aircraft (with a tenth under restoration), and with the hard work and overhauls by Fluffy & Co the BBMF aircraft can be operated more or less indefinitely, rather than a maximum of 15 years for XH558.

Hear hear!

When the Red Arrows get the boot, when the RAF is reduced to one knackered old Typhoon that everyone has to share, the BBMF can, must and almost certainly WILL still be going, in probably more or less the same form.

And who’d have it any other way?

The Vulcan isn’t the great educative opportunity or anything else that it’s been promoted as- it’s simply a great old aircraft that a select minority if the population want to see again. The few are stamping their feet because the many, frankly, just aren’t that interested.

Can’t top what’s already been said- a great man in his field.

When i worked on the vulcan just about all the engineers and admin staff contacted as many companies as we could. We used email and letters.we even made up some advetising pictures with products in them to try to attract non-aviation based companies. This started when we realised that the management were not getting anywhere and went on for months. No-one was interested.
The pledge scheme set up by the supporters club was along with the 500K donation by Sir Jack Hayward the ONLY reason we all kept our jobs and the project continued past Aug 31st 2006.
Some businesses and individual entrepreneurs have been approached more than once.
Other people who have apparently approached the tvoc have either been ignored or there has been a very muted response from the management.

Back then Felicity Irwin was used as the scapegoat for a lack of sponsorship
and i am ashamed to say i was one of many who blamed her for the lack of financial support but she resigned from the project in the autumn of 2006 and STILL we have no sponsor.

I would love to be proved wrong (not because i think the management need a good luck break, because they don’t deserve it) i would love to see the aircraft fly BUT i don’t think anybody is willing to heavily invest in an aircraft that has taken around 6 million to rebuild so far, will need 2 million minimum to run each year and in just a few years will most likely need a massive structural overhaul possibly costing further millions.

Superb post there! Nail, head, etc.

i have often seen it at shows as a static, but do they not fly it anymore?

It later crashed again, and the recovery team cut through it’s spars to shift it!

Didn’t someone on here say that Clive Du Cros then left his family and went off to Spain? 🙁

Was always surprised it was trying to attend Wroughton so soon- it had only flown a handful of times and essentially was still an un-tested prototype more than anything?

Far be it from me to say whether a pilot who climbs into a twin-engined WWII aircraft, and who was judged to be competant at the time its owner/the authorities, let him take it up, was later guilty of ‘gross incompetance’.

Well, Graham Warner spoke of several prior incidents that had caused some question over Roy Pullan’s suitability as a display pilot, and blames himself for failing to heed these previous incidents when allowing Pullan to fly the Blenheim. Pullan agreed beforehand with the owner (Warner) and the venue (Denham) that no landing would be made at that venue, due to the relatively short runway there. However, on the spur of the moment Pullan announced a touch and go, and blew it- he landed late, got in a panic, slammed the throttles open against the advice in the pilot’s notes, and then sat there practically trance-like as poor John Romanin tried to claw his hand off of the throttles. Weall know what happened next.

I’d say that was ‘gross incompetance’, and what’s more, so then did the CAA!

G-MKIV was essentially binned by an utter numpty; no fault of the superb aircraft at all.

As for the second aircraft’s crash, I must admit I know next to nothing about that, and never really knew the outcome of what had happened- pilot error, mechanical fault? No idea.

THE Smudge?

Bloody great to hear from you then- a definitive word on the Blenheim at last!

Very interesting Mark V!