Only 4 days left to save Avro Vulcan XH558

[bingoking]

This magnificent aircraft is the only flying example left in the world and is kept going by charitable donations.

They are 4 days away from closure and every donation small or large will help to raide the £146,000 needed.

Vulcan to the Sky website

You can TEXT a donation anytime to the value of £3 by texting VULCAN to 82055Calls cost £3 plus one standard rate text message. (Please ensure you have Bill payers permission)

[slewthy]

Damn - I thought it had been saved the chop? Didnt they get a large lottery fund?

[bingoking]

Not sure about the lottery funding but I do remember that last year some anonymous benefactor donated about £400k (if memory serves me well, which is surprising these days) on the last day. hopefully there will be a knight in shining armour riding over the hill to save it for another year.

Perhaps a friendly banker might help by donating some of his bonus, only another £128,978 and 3 days to go.

Edited October 28, 2010 by bingoking

[slewthy]

£73,000 still needed, I see. They are doing very well!

Yep, I cant find any evidence of a lottery grant, just a 'declined' in 2002.

[tinywillyuk]

Ref the lottery, HLF grant to the tune of £2,734,000 received, with last payment in 2008.

Clicky

I've tossed my cash in their bucket again though.. Cant help myself despite it sucking up more cash than is sensible..

But then so does an Esprit.

[slewthy]

Simon - you are so right there. Its exactly like the Esprit.

Just think, one day there may be a fund to keep the last road worthy esprit running.

More likely the fund will be to buy the petrol for it!

[rocket63]

Made a donation. I do so hope it makes the difference.

[rogerch]

A picture as old as the plane, taken by my Dad at the Farnborough Air Show.

[pete]

looks like from next year the last vulcan flying is to be grounded

http://www.pistonheads.com/news/default.asp?storyId=26514

[alan]

Sad news

[molemot]

Not helped by the wanton destruction of two perfectly servicable engines earlier this year. There are no more usable engines other than those held by Vulcan to the Sky. Someone left bags of silica gel in the intake..which should never have been there in the first place..and they were ingested by one engine, and the bits expelled by it self destructing took out the other engine in the pair. So much for their control procedures....

[ramjet]

What? No-one checked before an engine start-up?

[Guest surferphil]

Tally ho chaps!

I grew up going to every air show in the region and the Vulcan was one of my favourites You could feel the shock waves rip through you and see them ripple across the airfield, I have never seen or experienced anything like it.

I just watched this old video on UTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=40knj0qg_Us

[molemot]

One year...OK, it was 1978...I found myself at the Abbotsford Airshow in British Columbia. A Vulcan was one of the major displays... so I had a nose around and found that I'd been through flying training with the co-pilot. This lead to an invitation to the after show party....where they were distributing the contents of the bomb-bay....barrels of best bitter! Since all the breweries in BC were on strike that summer, it was very well received. As was the flying display....rainy and low cloud, and the magnificent beast did a low pass and a pull up straight into cloud....from which it emerged a bit later in such an attitude that it was clear that a barrel roll had been carried out! The landing was unusual too, with the braking parachute being deployed whilst still airborne, and Avro's finest stopped in a very short distance.

As for the engine failures...they had 8 serviceable engines to start with, iirc. These were zero timed engines kept in deep storage, properly inhibited, and they are the only engines that Rolls Royce and the CAA will allow to be used...there are other Olympus engines scattered about, but no others have traceability via the correct paperwork. One engine was changed during the flying test phase, and the crass error of leaving silica gel dessicant packs in the aircraft intakes...where they should never have been... resulted in ingestion into one engine and the subsequent destruction of both it and the one next to it due to the bits of compressor blades expelled by the self destructing first one being sucked in to the paired engine. So that's 3 of the spares gone... 4 in the aeroplane, leaving just one "good spare", I believe. Engines were also part of the problem with Concorde, as BA had been changing 4 engines a week sometimes...and there were no new ones.....the Concorde Olympus was a development of that in the Vulcan, but a very different piece of kit. The airframe of 558 is rapidly running out of fatigue hours, too; there is a suggestion for a modification to the main spar to get round this, but the flying hours extension it could give compared to the cost of doing it makes it uneconomic, it seems.

[pete]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-19952395

[ramjet]

The wings on the winged keel on Australia II were gleaned from a section of the vulcan wing as well. Bit of trivia.

[73JPS]

Is there a schedule of airshows she will fly in her last days? That might be worth making a trip over to see: I remember seeing the Vulcan at the Toronto International Air Show every year I went in the 70s: what an airplane!

[pete]

http://www.vulcantothesky.org/

[ChrisJ]

Dates for 2013 don't seem to have been finalised yet.

I'm definitely going to be taking my family to at least one of the airshows where XH588 will be appearing.

[ChrisJ]

Although I might turn my car alarm off.

[73JPS]

http://www.vulcantothesky.org/

Thanks Peter

I just love the shape of that wing.

[Roger 912]

Way back when I was a young shaver, I had a girlfriend up in Croft and at that time in the early 60s the Vulcan bombers used to do touch and go on the local airfield. I used to park outside the airfield but at the end of the runway so I could get that wonderful blast and noise of those engines. I was also very lucky to be over in the UK in the late 70s or early 80s and I can remember walking with my young son in North London and a Vulcan bomber flew overhead.

Down in Cape Town we have an organisation called "Thunder City" and they had two English Electric Lightning fighters flying and were regularly breaking the sound barrier out at sea. Unfortunately about 4 years ago at an airshow, at a military airbase in the Overberg, one was doing a fly past and the pilot radioed to say that he had lost all hydraulics and was bailing out. Unfortunately the canopy failed to open and he went down with the aircraft. A very sad day to lose both a wonderful pilot and the Lightning fighter.

[ChrisJ]

Hi Roger. The report into the crash - clicky - makes for a very depressing read. It was more than hydraulics - see the photos on page 41.

All the fleet at Thunder City is up for sale if anyone has some cash to spare - see Thunder City Aircraft Company - Historical Military Jets - GoIndustry DoveBid

Featuring:

• 3x English Electric Lightning's "Mk F6a" (x2) and "Mk T5b" (x1). - These 3 Lightnings are the only flying airworthy examples in the world today. The English Electric Lightning is a supersonic jet fighter of the cold war era. Equipped with 2 Rolls Royce "Avon 30201C" afterburning turbojets. Capable of Mark 2 (at 15 000ft) and a ceiling of 60,000ft+ and still holds a number of world climb-to-altitude records!
  
• 3x BAE Buccaneer's "S Mk 2b" - These 3 Buccaneers are the only flying airworthy examples in the world today. The BAE Buccaneer was a British low-level strike aircraft. Equipped with 2 Rolls Royce "Spey Mk 101" Turbofans. Max Speed 667mph (at 200ft), range 2,300mi and a ceiling of 40,000ft.
  
• 4x Hawker Hunter's (Various Mk's) - The Hawker Hunter was a subsonic British jet aircraft and operated as fighter-bomber and reconnaissance roles. Equipped with a single Rolls Royce "Avon 12201" turbine engine. Max Speed 715mph (at sea level) and ceiling of 50,000ft
  

One of the Buccaneers flew again in March this year

Edited November 18, 2012 by ChrisJ

[Rich H]

The CAA report is very damning of the Thunder City organisation

There is a lightning being put back together in the US slowly but I suspect it'll never get clearance as a result of ZU-BEX.

They were lethal enough in the hands of the RAF with proper maintenace organisations.

[Roger 912]

I was told by some pals that the only reason that the Lightnings were flying down here and not in Europe and GB was the noise factor. I don't know about you, but it is the noise that makes these aircraft so iconic.

I was down at the airshow with the Overberg Classic Car Club the year before the Lightning pranged. The show was spectacular with Denel shooting off live rounds from the Rooivalk helicopter and also live firing of missiles at airborne targets. I can just imagine that happening in PC EU.