Robert,
Thanks for your very clear and comprehensive post.
In your post, you wrote "The 20-month time delay between the original HLF decision in December 2003 and the actual start of work on the aircraft in August 2005 ate up a fair amount of the funds we had raised. This delay came from all sorts of different reasons, but mainly for contractual, legal and insurance reasons. For example, ensuring that our insurers, Marshall Aerospace's insurers and those of the key critical systems OEMs were all in agreement took some time."
As this was obviously not expected, could you give us some rough idea of the scale of funding wich the 20 month delay ate up? Because I think it would not be unreasonable for the HLF to increase their grant by the same amount.
As for Marshall Aerospace, they stand to earn tens, if not hundreds of millions from the RAF Hercules Integrated Operational Support contract, and probably also an equivalent support contract for the TriStar. As announced today, they will eventually relocate to Mildenhall or Wyton; this will undoubtedly also bring in a substantial amount of money. Thus I find it rather shameful of them to have increased their cost element of this project as much as they clearly have and call for them to do their bit to get you through to the first flight date at least.
I also consider that the Bruntignthorpe hangar rent should be waived until the first flight has been made, at the very least.