FJJP, if you look at the picture you will see not striker.

This came after our boss dropped it in in 1964 at Butterworth. Wouldn't have worked anyway as the striker arm was only about 8 inches long and he dropped it from 30 feet.

Same boss, post-mod with, I think, Ricky Crowder as P1, landed, pulled the nose up and got the first light on. Kept light 1 on and 2 off until the speed decayed.

"How was that then?" <g>

"Are you sure light 2 bulb is working?"

:(

1 light = 'You are just about to damage the ECM cone'

2 lights = 'You have just damaged the ECM cone!'

1 light = 'The strut has made contact with the ground and has moved from the parked position'.

2 lights = 'The strut has reached the end of its travel. Any further movement will result in damage to the ECM cone'.

Yes - that's what was supposed to happen. But most people who saw one light very soon saw both - and then had a fair bit of explaining to do!

Extreme aerodynamic braking wasn't really that necessary in any case.

On the K2, the striker was repositioned under the 'skip' and was about 2 feet longer. To stop the constant illumination of the lights in the cockpit, it was wirelocked in the forward position to prevent the airflow from making the switches. An aerodynamic landing would just snap the locking wire. The only problem it caused was when pushing the kite into one of the hangars (either 3 or 4 south end), where the slope would try to rip the striker off if it was not held in the fully up position.

As long as the crew remembered they were in a K2 and not a B2 on landing they were OK.

I have received a photo of the Martin-Baker rear crew ejection system rig:

http://avrovulcan.org.uk/misc/seats2.jpg

The hatch was under the canopy that had to be blown first. The plotter went out first vertically. Nav rad and AEO seats have hinges at the bottom of the seat rails. The tops of the seats rotated inwards along the top rail and fired at an angle through the opening - first the radar then the AEO.

I understand the sequence was started by the co-pilot after the canopy had been blown - the handle being hidden before that. The pilots' seats were only armed after the AEO had left as I recall.

More at Vulcans in Camera.
Contributions welcomed.

A date for your diary: Discovery Wings, 25th May, 7pm and 10pm, "Vulcans, Victors and Cuba".

We have a photo, here at work, of a Vulcan doing a low pass, at what looks like Waddington, with several other Vulcans on the pads. No ID marks on the flyer apart from a white shield with a red cross on the fin. Was anyone here flying it?

MightyGem

Thanks for the reminder. If only all aviation related progs were of the quality of this one. As TV documentaries go it is top of my list.

The longest nonstop Vulcan flight was by XH481 on 20th June 1961 from Scampton to Sydney. The flight took just over 20 hours.

The aircraft was "borrowed" by 617 squadron from 101 squadron for the flight as it had the best servicabilty record at the time. 101 squadron didn't know at the time why 617 squadron wanted that particular aircraft! My dad in particular was extremely pissed off as he was the crew chief of XH481... and anyone who knew my dad would understand why XH481 was such a good aircraft.

Despatcher

and 21 years later what seemed a pointless exercise requiring probably the majority of the Valiant tanker force became an operation.

Even with the gap of 21 years and the upgrade to the Mark 2 I am sure the lessons learnt were applied. Even if the only lesson was that we could fly a Vulcan for 20 hours.

Beags,

Might not have been necessary, but was jolly good fun.

I recall that 1st light meant contact, 2nd light meant that the little stick thingy had been pushed up into its housing, any more back pressure was optional and may cause damage.

Nothing matters very much, most things don't matter at all.

Was it Vulcans that came out to Perth for the Games in the early 60? Any stories etc from that trip?

Yes it was Vulcan's and I was stuck in Singapore. ASAIK they were based at Darwin and flew some cracking exercises there. I think they went down to Perth that time.

In UK the bombers used to fly 'fighter rules' ie simulating the enemy bombers. Not too high, not too low, and nice and level.

In Oz, totatally unrealistically for the OZ jets, we were able to fly bomber rules. Not too low, about 55K plus was comfortable, not too high, less than 300 feet was perhaps not unheard of. Plenty of open air space to no jammer restrictions.

Flying above the contrail level and jamming the height finders was great. The fighter controllers could 'see' all the bombers but they were 'invisible' to the fighter jocks as they were simply looking in the wrong place.

When you are capping at 30-35k it is a long way up to 55k.

V-Force reunion at Newark Air Museum on 22/23 May. Interesting who went. About a third of my first sqn 14 out of 55 or so were there but it seemed a very generational thing.

Crews from 1966 and earlier were thick on the ground but those from 1967 onward were scarce. There was however a recently retired AVM from the 70s V-Force.

The evening function also seemed to attract an older group. Amazing though, QFIs who in the 60s looked 40 odd looked hardly a day older 40 years on. Even Wally George and John 'Willie' were unchanged. Wally with his teeth and John with his foghorn voice from Lincolns.

Thanks to Don Chadwick and his small team for organising it.

Hopefully it hasn't come up in this thread so far (32 pages!?), but Phoenix Simulation Software (http://www.phoenix-simulation.co.uk/ ) have a superb model of XH558 for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002/2004. Cost is £20, half of which goes to the fund to get it flying again (http://www.tvoc.co.uk/).

Bought mine yesterday, first shot climbing out of Gibraltar:
http://www.btinternet.com/~nick.evan...tar_Vulcan.jpg

Engine noise is spot on, at least as far as I remember having seen it many years ago at airshows. Black smoke out of the engines at full throttle looks good as well.

I don't believe a Vulcan ever flew in to Gibraltar let alone out again.

The obvious reasons were the undershoot and overshoot and also the long straight in approach for 27 <g>.

Diversions were also a bit thin on the ground. The problem was the high, normal max landing weight, coupled with the lack of fuel dump.

Several times the aircraft would be too heavy for the short field landing and too remote for a diversion when the weight was right. I believe I mentioned this earlier in the thread when we went to Gan and had to land at 140,000lb which left us only about 17,000 lbs of fuel.

Like the Phantom thread, my memories are mainly from being deafened at countless airshows, particularly by 4 ship scrambles in the 70s & 80s. My only regret is not seeing one "down on the deck".
In the UK where did the big birds fly at L/L?
I have a copy of the video of the same name about low flying in Canada, fan-bloody-tastic!!;)

I can only add a few images as my recollections......:(

http://aa.1asphost.com/AEROMEDIA/Scan33.jpg

http://aa.1asphost.com/AEROMEDIA/Scan34.jpg

http://aa.1asphost.com/AEROMEDIA/Scan36.jpg

http://aa.1asphost.com/AEROMEDIA/Scan37.jpg

http://aa.1asphost.com/AEROMEDIA/Scan38.jpg

Hairy, cant see your pics, think you might want to add a "www" into the links - can't wait to see 'em!

Treadders :ok:

Pontius Nav

The "hairiest" Vulcan diversion I ever heard of was a Mk 1 of, I think, the "squadron with a hole in the middle". It was during an Adex that was the central feature of Exercise SUNSPOT deployments to Luqa. There was the usual queue to recover into Luqa after the grand finale raid. The Lightnings naturally had priority - they were, after all, in a fuel emergency as soon as they tucked their wheels up! Then there were a few civil movements , and finally the Vulcans. The last of the Vulcan stream was usually stretching it to make its Plan 1 to Sigonella (sp?) in Siciily. On this occasion the penultimate Vulcan blew the tyres on one bogey on touch-down and obstructed the runway. The final Vulcan on go- round announced that he had "lost" his alternate and declared an emergency. ATC and the Station Commander wanted to tow the obstructing Vulcan onto the grass which would probably have damaged the U/c. The DCF (Bootsie I think) persuaded the staish to hold off, phoned Halfar, where there was still a RN presence, and asked them to lay out some goosenecks (dusk was drawing in). I am not sure how long the runway was at Halfar, but the threshold was on the edge of the cliff - sheer to the sea about 100 ft below. I think it was considerably less than 6,000 ft because it used to give us pause for thought in a heavily laden Meatbox. The overrun, as usual, consisted of stone walls. All went well (the brake chute deployed OK this time!) and no one was scratched. :D

Pontius, wrong about Gib I'm afraid. When Johnny Pack was AOGib he persuaded MOD to donate a Vulcan to be 'gate guard'. It was parked on the town side of Spanish Road beside the stadium. It became quite dangerous as the salt air rotted the structure. An ex 617 crew chief became OC VAS, and not long into his tour he had the unenviable task of arranging to tow the beast over to the dispersal, where it languished for many more months before being broken up. I can testify to its poor condition - I actually pushed a finger through the skin under the wing!

The Vulcan was never required to fly into Gib because Gib was en-route to nowhere as far as Vulcan ops was concerned; Johnny just loved the ac and wanted one near...

These better??

http://img48.photobucket.com/albums/...lcanScan36.jpg

http://img48.photobucket.com/albums/..._landcan37.jpg

http://img48.photobucket.com/albums/...l444Scan33.jpg

http://img48.photobucket.com/albums/...m608Scan34.jpg

http://img48.photobucket.com/albums/..._topScan38.jpg

Oh yeah! Super!

You need to make 'em a bit smaller though, say 640dpi wide - that way they'll fit within the PPRuNe layout on most people's screens.

Cheers

Treadders

:ok:

Keep'em big - it's a Vulcan remember, not a Cessna 150

remember when they dispersed to Leeming when I was at RN EFTS - living in the pre-fabs (SEECO huts in the trade) about 200m from the rway - what a spectacular noise.........

Very true A_A, but unless you are running a much higher res screen, you have to scroll right to read the posts - very irritating! Particularly with the excellent quality of posts (and pics) on this thread!

Nopw, if you click on the pics to go full screen...

sorry about the size ( the number of times Ive said that in my life:cool: !) I have no imaging software and so they're pretty raw scans off the scanner with a very limited range of functions.
noted.

No apology needed Hairy (I love your monika, me thinks it's tongue in... errr...) feel free to email them to me and I'll do the business. On Monday tho. I'll PM you my email address.

Mike Jenvey, yes Gan was with a full bomb load, kit for 7 and the COs golf clubs. He didn't take them out until we got to Butterworth.

Zero fuel weights were fascinating.

The lightest I recall was around XM597 at 96K. This then moved up to about 98K, probably with the first coat of green paint.

The weights in 1967 started to creep over the ton as the paint was changed to polyurethane. 8,000 square feet of wing, it added about 4,000lbs.

Then the TFR, X-Band Jammer and the IRD/RBW and still it increased. Once the big rivets started appearing on the wing and the extra reinforcement on the spars we started to get to 108k. The heaviest I recall in the early 70s was about 111K.

Chuck in 1,000 for the crew, 88K for a double drum fit, 7x1000 then your 204k would easily be exceed. But back in 64, a clean TOW was about 172k and pilots had to practise an occasional Max weight take-off at 178k when they added the YS2.

At that time the conventional loads were really only for the Mk 1s on the Sunspot. Come Malaysia however we then had max weights of 194k. Sitting in the middle of the apron at Khormaksar the 4 Vulcans, each with 21k of bombs, and in easy mortar range, sank gently into the tarmac. When we came to leave after a week we had 6 inch tarmac chocks and just about blew a hangar away <vbg>.

Hope that helps.

FJJP
I stand corrected but then again John Pack was something else again.

Two of walking out of STC when this staff car reversed smartly and JP wound the window down for a chat.

My first skipper had also been JPs copilot and JP was my stn cdr at ISK.

I have just found a letter in my fathers papers from a chap called Anthony L Blakeman who was an Experimental Test Pilot for AVRO at Woodford. The letter is dated 20-10-57 and refers to my fathers time as a Flight Test Observer on the Vulcan. It looks like a 'reference' type letter.
Can anyone tell me anything about Anthony L Blakeman?

Many thanks


Temps

Tony Blackman

Tony graduated on No 13 ETPS course in 1954.

Flew with him a few times on Vulcans at Boscombe Down circa 1956 before he left to go to Avro at Woodford.

Where are you now Tony?

Possibly the same Tony Blackman who flew the Blackburn B2 at a number of Air Shows in the '70s & '80s?
During that period, I believe he was Chief Test Pilot at Holme-on-Spalding Moor/Brough?

Just checked the letter again and it is signed Anthony L Blackman and not Blakeman as I originally stated. Thanks for the responses, and the dates match.

Temps

nearly up!
 

how tempting was it to just keep going!

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/608590/M/

vulcan at wellesbourne mountford 20 jun 04

Drool, drool! Mind you it looks as though them there engines ain't been run for a while - either that or they're running 'em on diesel:ok:

Allan907, it could be concrete dust. She certainly looks very clean. First flew in 655 on 8 Sep 65 from RAF Cranwell on Exercise Unison.

This was the big tri-service display. We did 4 hr 50 min and ended up diverting the Scampton having flow the main UK low level route through Wales and ending with a 2H attack at West Freugh.

The next day, 23 hours later, we flew 5 hr 15 min on a different exercise from Cottesmore. From this it suggests we would have had just 17 hours off. Still only managed 25 hours in 5 trips that month.

Back to the Top!
 

I was in the US on my hols last week and visiting some friends near Omaha. They suggested that I may like to visit the "Museum of the (what I thought) Plains" Having great admiration for all those who trekked across the plains in the 1800s, I agreed.

Anyway it was the Museum of the Planes! The SAC Air and Space Museum. Inside was Vulcan XM 573. The info said that it was delivered to 83 Sqn in March 1963, and flown to Offut in June 1982.

Anyone here who flew it?

I flew a check ride with Frank Bonfield's crew at Waddo on 2 October 1967. We did a practice double engine failure after take-off, 4 Type 5 attacks (whatever they were!), a Type 2J, some fighter affil and CT including 2 x ILS. They were probably the best crew on 50 Sqn at the time. That was my last trip in XM573. :)

XM573
 

I flew it on my second trip on the OCU, Reg Wareham was the QFI. Never flew it again.

YS

Mighty Gem

A picture would be good. Any chance of one? In the meantime I bet that there are one or two of the V drivers who will bring up some good memories.

Flew in it a lot during summer 1979 with the Blyth crew on 44 Sqn. A lot of it was displays, including Manchester, Waddo open day and Chicago Lakeshore

Flew 570, 571 and 572, but never 573. I guess it was allocated to the Zimbabwe Air Legion when I was at Sunny Scampton on 35 from 1977-80!