The Frog was bloody funny when it first came out around Xmas time, the singing birds were funnyish for a bit.

However the frog the birds the dragon and whatever else are just a pain in the arse these days, having to put up with the frog and the rest of the Jamster animals 24/7 its enough to make one wanna borrow a Tornado and drop a large bomb on the Jamster office.

did I read somewhere that the Shackleton Preservation Trust are taking a fresh look at flying their aircraft in the UK.

Your right, they are doing a full survey/report on the Shack airframe paying particular attention to the Wing Spar situation. Its very early days but I for one hope this project goes all the way.

Personally I couldn’t see the point in dismantling a perfectly good taxiable revenue-earning airframe, in order to convert it to a pile of bits which might or might not one day become Vulcan shaped again, depending on whether or not the Lottery boys coughed up some money

The point of dismantling XH558 was to see if a rebuild to fly was possible or not, (well no that carn’t be right it still had a dataplate so it would have been yes anyway), but being serious it was to check the internal systems and structure and to allow test’s to be conducted on the airframe.

Yes it was a risk but what would you rather have had, a Vulcan that was able to be rebuilt to fly, yet was never made airworthy because nobody would dare take a risk and just kept it ground running, or a Vulcan in bits that would not fly again for technical reason but at least an attempt would have been made.

In any case the Vulcan was dismantled properly so even if a rebuild to fly had been a no go with donations it could have been rebuilt to taxing condition.

Oh and on the insurance point that people have made, I believe BAE System’s will be paying for the insurance.