Originally Posted by Tim McLelland
The situation appears to be that once this hurdle is cleared, the aircraft can reach the test flight stage.
The situation is certainly nothing of the kind.
Quite clearly, from VTS' own figures, it requires a further £1.2m to complete the rebuild and airtest it. Then a further £1.2m per season to operate.
So £2.4 million minimum by the end of next airshow season, say 13 months.
So what's the point of throwing another £250k into this black hole? Sorry, but it's just wasting more money on this untenable project. I repeat -
IT WILL COST A FURTHER £2.4M IN THE NEXT YEAR, BY VTS' OWN FIGURES.
Where do they think that the annual operating costs of £1.2m will come from? It will probably do a maximum of 10 shows or so per year, that means that they need to raise £120k for each appearance, more than the budget for bought-in display items for almost every show in the UK. It simply doesn't add up.
They admit that they've raised a total of only £40k in the last 3 months of the 'last chance' fundraising drive.
I feel sorry for those who have worked on a voluntary basis supporting this worthy dream for many years, and for those paid employees about to lose their jobs, but continuation of the project in the face of the vast funding gap that they're facing just makes no sense at all.