WR974 was sold to a new owner at Bruntingthorpe. This was a part of the rationalisation of the airframes owned by Gatwick Aviation Museum, due to two main reasons. Firstly, we do not have sufficient engineering staff to keep all aiframes from slowly corroding away, so it was decided to move airframes on before they became so bad that they could not be recovered. In this way we could concentrate our resources on a core number of airframes. This has already given us impetus and brought the Lightning ZF579 to a point where we are ready to light up its two zero time Avons. Secondly, our continual issues with the local council regarding getting our collection under cover showed our willingness to be flexible about the aircraft and the sensitivity about the issue.
As regards running Shackletons, we often see comments that we had, in the past, run both aircraft, sadly we have never run WR974(K). The last time WR982(J) was run was 2009. We are at the early stages of bringing 982 back to a runnning state, the plan being to run her next year. We keep the Griffons oiled and lubricated and turn them on a regular basis. We have just repeated this process and have recently cleaned and lubricated the engine control runs. More similar work will be carried out during the next months. Fuel cost has been the primary reason that runs have not been carried out in the last few years.
The Griffons from WR974 were retained and will eventually be put through a restoration process over the next few years, the aim being to replace all of the current engines on WR982 by restored units.
We wish the guys at Bruntingthorpe all the best putting K back together and look forward to seeing her looking good.
pm575
GAM
Last edited by pmills575; 17th Oct 2014 at 06:55.