I've already thrown-in my two penneth about the Vulcan people on this forum, so I won't bother repeating it, suffice to say that I just wonder how a major project such as this can plod-on for so many years and still not find a major corporate sponsor. I mean, all these years? As has been mentioned, even the Sea Vixen found a sponsor, although God-forbid another poor aircraft appeared in Red Bull's vile colours, and especially not a Vulcan!
I have to question what the point is in continually asking enthusiasts and supporters to contribute small amounts of cash towards a project which needs large amounts of money. Surely, the project's administrators should be devoting all their time to finding a proper sponsor who would support the aircraft. You also have to ask whether Richard Branson has ever actually been asked to put his hand in his pocket, or at least asked properly.
They seem to spend time on lots of minor projects and small fund raising ideas, but don't appear to make any decisive effort to find a major sponsor. One has to wonder whether the time spent on small-scale fundraising just gives the impression (to potential sponsors) that the project is a small, amateur set-up that doesn't really need a proper supporter. Likewise, why isn't the aircraft on television or in the papers? News programmes are starved of good stories every day, and yet I've not seen 558 on the TV for years.
Worse still, I don't think anyone oustide of enthusiast circles really knows much about the project. There's no obvious "public face" that promotes the project, and there's never any obvious promotion of their website oustide of aviation publications. When you manage to get to the website it gives the impression that the project is an amateur fund-raising project, not an important national programme which should be treated as such.
Where are our MP's? Where are the papers? The TV? The radio? Celebrities? Even authors? (oops, I forgot, us authors are told to mind our own business when we try to help)...
I feel sorry for the guys that are putting all their efforts into restoring 558 because I have seen nothing to convince me that the project's administrators are handling the project all that well. Okay, I could be wrong, but part of my point here is that there's not much information made available to suggest otherwise.