Vulcan

All this talk of the Vulcan has made me want to boast - my brother was part of the design team for the original Vulcans and worked on the undercarriage.

Have you seen the Avro 707C at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry? Here is a rather cluttered image
[IMG]http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j311/Tinywales/other/IMGP2237.jpg[/IMG]

Howard

She does not necessarily fly directly from one display location to another. They try to overfly sites that they feel she would be appreciated at. She is limited to visual flight rules so would be routed around any bad weather. There are various civil and military airlanes she would be restricted to/from - she doesn't want to collect some hotblood blasting around in a Tornado at 420kts. There are several considerations taken into account when deciding her route.


Gratuitous Vulcan video

From what I understand XH558 is not based at Bruntingthorpe during this season it is based at RAF Brize Norton then possibly back to Bruntingthorpe once the season is finished?

Yes she has been down at Brize but her home base is Bruntingthorpe.

She was moved from Brunt for two reasons. Firstly the airfield does not really have the infrastructure (fire service etc.)for regular Vulcan ops. Secondly the airfield is to be used to store a large number of unsold vehicles, which would mean a lot of debris. If her engines were to ingest even a small stone for example, the results could be disastrous.

I am not sure they have decided where she will spend the winter.

So I take it that's no longer her homeplate? If so I can understand the move...

Also Bruntingthorpe has a track to so that will contribute to more debris.

Excuse me but . . . what makes this aircraft a female? (Keep it clean)

They have random "off days"

Break down for no reason

Cost a fortune

But treat them nicely and you will get a great ride

The Vulcan costs a huge amount of money to keep it flying, can anyone remember how much exactly?

It certainly is a monster of a plane and that noise.....fantastic.

Upwards of £50,000.00 a month according to one site I read. Another site quotes an estimate of £1.6 million a year.

Thanks Peter. That's actually less than I thought, but still quite an amount to raise every year.

Depends how you're working out the costs.

There is a massive amount of time/expertise given to the project from ex-RAF personnel/airframe technicians etc, and without that, I don't think they could afford to keep her flying, or at the very least it would be even more money to raise.

I've heard well over £100k a month, from a guy who is one of the 'helpers', but the Vulcan does earn a bit of money too, which helps, as do the corporate sponsors.

Whatever the cost, the Vulcan is an awesome sight, and I hope she can keep flying for a few years yet!

Probably nothing more scientific than general opinion.

Traditionally, ships and aircraft are considered to be female. Perhaps early sailors considered them to be their mothers, taking care of them at sea, or something along those lines.

In literature going back hundreds of years, ships were "she" and it seems to have carried over to aircraft.

I don't know about space shuttles...

I guess an aircraft or ship is best described as beautiful rather than handsome, hence the feminine slant, as it were.

A friend of mine has a boat in Spain and he's called it Elle, which is Spanish for 'she'.