Saracenman - many thanks for your answers to The Winco. I had been hesitating to come on the thread again, because he always seems to want to personalise everything, and it’s getting a bit wearing. Also, like you, I’ve been very busy, both with Vulcan stuff and with my day job.
Another problem I have with replying to anything The Winco says is that he doesn’t seem to pay any attention. I have tried in two separate posts (#2264 on 16 Feb, #2268 on 17 Feb) to explain that, after the scurrilous treatment Robert Pleming has received at the hands of a few anonymous PPRuNe contributors, he is unlikely to come onto this thread and explain anything. But apparently I have completely failed to communicate that to The Winco. So I’m grateful for your explanations of where information is being given.
I would disagree with you on one small point, though. You say
I've also been told by several people that Dr. Pleming "doesn't do the internet" - well that's his prerogative of course, but when you're a CEO of a £7m organisation, you should realise your own limitations; if you don't understand a certain facet of a commercial operation, then employ someone who does!
Dr P‘s last job before VTS was as the European CEO of the computer giant Cisco Systems. He probably understands more about computers in general and the internet in particular than many of us put together. It’s not that he doesn’t do the internet - it’s mostly that he doesn’t have time to spend hours trawling through sites and looking for questions to answer - and I know you (saracenman) have implied as much.
I can vouch for how hard he (and many other people, of course) are working at the moment. As a very small example, I received two Vulcan-orientated messages from him between 10 and 11 o’clock on Saturday evening.
I do find it bit rich that The Winco continues to complain that he’s not getting the information from Robert Pleming that he clearly feels he deserves. I offered to send Dr P’s 11 Feb press briefing to anyone that wanted it. Several people did, but not The Winco. Then I offered to get him a personal meeting with the VTS Business Development Manager (Michael Trotter). He declined that too. How does that work, Winco?
On a rather more practical note, I wonder how many PPRuNers have seen the Mail on Sunday today.
Just 5 days to save the Vulcan: Desperate race to raise £1⁄2m or historic British bomber will be grounded for ever | Mail Online
The full version is online, but the print version has the picture of the XH558 cockpit as a centre-page double spread, as well as a sympathetic article on pages 32 and 33.
Lest anyone should think these things just happen at the appropriate time - they don’t. Any media coverage only comes about after a lot of time-consuming (and often frustratingly fruitless) work. I’m not claiming any credit for the Mail on Sunday stuff, btw, but I do know how much effort is being made, in all sorts of not-necessarily-obvious ways, by all sorts of people. The nature of that sort of work does mean that, unless it actually blossoms with publication or broadcast, most of it remains out of the public eye (and even hidden from the basilisk gaze of The Winco). And I would also suggest that the success ratio of national media coverage is, in any project, quite small. Persuading the national media to cover your pet project - again and again - is very hard. So something like today’s Mail coverage, or the letter and report in the Telegraph on 11 Feb, is the tip of an iceberg, and the result of much effort.
Finally, I would just like to make a point to the several posters who suggest that, once again, VTST is crying ‘wolf’, only to reveal a saviour of some kind at the last minute. In my experience, it may look like that - but on the last three occasions when the whole bang-shoot has been on the very edge of genuine disaster, it has actually been saved by a last-minute intervention which may have been developing for some time, but which has necessarily not matured until it was almost too late. If that happens this time, and 558 is saved again, that will be because, once again, people have just managed to pull the project out of the fire. Nobody likes doing it that way - but that seems to be the nature of keeping this amazing, unique, beloved aeroplane flying.
airsound