I'm afraid my experience of the VC-10 is as SLF but this fascinating thread has brought back a couple of memories. I was up at Embakasi (Nairobi) one (hot) lunchtime waiting to collect one of engineers who was due in from Malawi. An Ethiopian Boeing 720 taxiied out and in the midst of clouds of black smoke use all the runway and looked as though it was going to go through the dead volcano Ol Donyo Sapuk (?) about 20 miles away. It didn't but an East African VC-10 to Addis taxiied out to the intersection, which was about halfway down the runway and blasted off from there. Doing what it was designed to do I guess.
The other memory was of standing in the queue to get my bags and I overheard somebody ask a BA steward what he thought of the new red/white/blue colour scheme and he replied "It makes us look like b****y British Rail". The BCal guys rather liked that.