Greetings to you, TSM - and Scrotum sends his to Caruthers!
Regarding the current shortfall, this is what the Trustees say:
"We really want to keep things moving to our
target of first test flight in 2006. However, the
VTST Trustees have to be prudent and thought
it wise to tell you that £350,000 is now a
projected shortfall and it is vital to the
programme that this money is available in the
short term.
There are two major reasons that this amount is
still required, one is because there was a figure
in the budget for sponsorship, which we were
assured by professional sponsorship advisors,
would be forthcoming. This has not materialised
and has created the shortfall.
The second is that the time lapse between the
award of the grant and the commencement of
work on aircraft has been almost a year due to
an unavoidable contractual delay period during
which time a skeleton staff and the aircraft had
to be maintained. No excuses, these and a
number of other reasons, too numerous to list,
have been contributory. Even in hindsight
nothing could have been done any differently
but what needs to be addressed is the now!
Believe me letters are out everywhere and hope
continues that someone will jump in and help –
and, yes, Sir Richard Branson has been asked!
Why now when they haven’t before one has to
ask but equally, we all have to hope, too.
We, that is you, and the Heritage Lottery Fund
(and that’s kind of you too isn’t it!) and VTST
have got this far. Do you think we can do it for
one more step? It would mean asking you to
send at least £20 and we would need the
majority of you to respond to meet the target!
Obviously, if you cannot manage £20 any
donation will be gratefully received at this time.
It’s easy to hear you thinking, bottomless pit,
and to some extent you are right, good money
after bad you may be saying. But this is the last
gasp, bar the actual display programme in
2007, and we must assume that there will be
support for that. So we do need to keep going
to first test flight and, together, realise our goal."
Well, I'm stil very supportive and have today sent off another donation. Incidentally, they are also raffling a free return trip for 2 to Thunder City, Seth Efrika( plus hotel) for a flight for one in Mike Beachyhead's T-bird Lightning. Only £1 per ticket for the only chance many will ever be likely to have for a Lightning flight! Perhaps even WIWOLs will end up supporting 558!
It would be a tragedy if the aircraft never made it back into the sky.