Vulcan tried to escape from Wellesbourne, 16th Sept 2022
 

Judging from the images, the Wellesbourne Vulcan tried to get away but was reined in before it jumped the boundary fence. I hope everyone is safe and sound. I'm sure the airframe will find its way back onto terra firma soon.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....7aa0c47444.jpg
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....dd5bbdfd01.jpg
Images courtesy of cg_341 at this UKAR thread.

Bet there is a good selection of skid marks... in several very different places!

I only thought that…
There is a video here....
Please go to the UKAR thread using the link at the end of my previous post to see the video.

Wot no drag chute?

One of those "Oh sh*t" moments. Not giving up without a fight, is it ?

Another excuse to close such "a dangerous airfield" ...........

Sometimes the SEN Vulcan does a run down the runway without a drag chute but never up to that sort of speed. Their higher speed Open Day runs require the drag chute to be serviceable and it's always deployed.

No allowance is made for the Brake Parachute in the Stop element of the takeoff calculation. The chute only figured in the brake energy calculation where you could find the Normal and Emergency Maximum Brake speeds (NMBS/EMBS) with and without the ‘chute. In any event, the brake parachute is more effective at high speed, When you realise you’re going to overrun it’s probably not going to make any difference.

It’s important to bear in mind that takeoff performance calculations only assume a failure of the most adverse power unit. No other failure is allowed for. This is why when carrying out a deliberate accelerate/stop manoeuvre you have plan it very carefully as there are additional factors in play. It pays to be very conservative in your approach and execution.

It is many years since I did any Vulcan takeoff performance planning.and IIRC the philosophy was a “high” V1, called Decision Speed in those days. Lower figures would be Vmcg limited. This of course would not apply in a pre-planned accelerate/stop where it might be prudent to restrict the speed below what would theoretically be possible.

It will be interesting to learn what actually occurred but I fear it might be a “Shoreham” moment for accelerate/stop demonstrations.

YS

Out of interest which authority would regulate that. If it’s an aircraft which is no longer allowed to fly by the CAA for whatever reason how can they claim to control it. It’s no longer an aircraft, it’s a funny shaped ground vehicle being driven at high speed on private land, like a farmer driving above the speed limit in a private field. Totally different, I would have thought, to Shoreham, which was an airworthy aircraft overseen by the authority.

Close one. Glad everyone is okay and the bird suffered minor if any damage.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the CAA have no jurisdiction or interest and the AAIB would probably decline to offer any input, even on a consultancy basis. Whether any investigation could lead to a prosecution is anyone's guess, it gets a bit complicated when both volunteers and employees are involved.

YS

Yellow Sun

Thanks for the explanation. It makes sense to me now that the chute would 'soak up' lots of the initial inertia and leave the brakes less to do. I fear that others who have posted responses are correct and this event will curtail further fast taxi demonstrations. Another little chip away from our aviation heritage.

Didn't get airborne, that's that 😝

Yonks ago our squadron rules ( unofficial of crse) were if you deployed the chute on the Hunter you got to repack it with the SE guys. Until we had a couple of close calls (St Athan and Brawdy in the wet rings a bell) then that got binned. Sharpish.

It didn't do a Victor.... but it was still a pretty decent attempt at leaving the reservation.

Lucky they didn’t leave the ground. Can’t imagine the condition the PFCU’s would be much cop after 38 yrs of no maintenance.

would need to be deployed before it set off as not a very long runway and wouldn't have enough time to deploy and inflate to be of any use.

On Victors, if you diverted, you had to pack it yourselves ....and it was an absolute barsteward to do. No SE guys to help, you needed one of those giraffe thingies and three of you carried it up and then placed it in the form of a 'Z' and trampled on it in the hopper (having tripped the circuit breakers in the cabin first).

That's an interesting use of the word Carnage.

From the website;

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....41040295b5.jpg

No Vulcan expert but don’t the spoilers get extended on landing (or RTOs) for additional weight on wheels (and increased braking efficiency)?

Be interesting to see their risk assessment (if it exists) on doing a fast taxi towards a main road and a pole which says "Gas Main" on it, with a non-airworthy aircraft. What could possibly go wrong?

While the Vulcan may not be air-worthy or covered by any CAA regs, the aerodrome itself is and is licenced and thus must ensure that all activities on the licenced area, whether air-worthy or not, are safe and reduce the risk to members of the public to ALARP.

Basic maths-Equations of Motion(s,u,v,a,t) should have been used in pre-planning,instead of reliance on the ASI.Most mobile phones will give a good Groundspeed read-out,and a stopwatch for timing,Markers along the edge of the runway for distance to `stop`...Going for a practice `blast`,after low speed steering and braking check seems a little `enthusiastic`....

The BBC has a couple of photos: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-...shire-62930756
The gear doesn't appear to have suffered a lot, but that's speculation of course.

Let's hope they - or their lawyers - don't read PPRuNe.

I can't help thinking that throwing 170,000lbs of 4-engine Bomber down a runway at a CAA licensed aerodrome, ultimately resulting in a near miss with a public highway is going to make somebody curious from a regulatory and safety viewpoint. "The ASI wasn't working for 2 seconds" does not suggest an obvious multi-layered approach to risk assessment.

Unlike the Falklands…
 

They saved flying 7,999 miles to almost miss the runway.

A quick look at CAP168 indicates these sections are likely to be of interest.
Ch2 App 2E
Ch3 App 3I
Ch9
The fact it wasn’t ‘airworthy’ will mitigate some issues, obviously at an unlicensed aerodrome or non aviation site it’d purely be an HSE issue incident. The fact Wellesborne is licensed will probably attract aviation regulatory interest, and perhaps consideration of appropriate RFFS category. It’s currently A1 + A2 on request, that’s assuming there’s no additional cover deployed when these tests/demonstrations take place.

If only there was a second ASI in the cockpit…

This has obviously attracted a lot of attention elsewhere ...some reports saying this was going to be the last fast taxy run for example, others saying the last one was five years ago, so presumably they've been doing regular anti-det runs in the interim...along with speculation this will be the end of such runs and a significant hike in insurance for types that can still be ground run.

There again, the Vulcan has always had an all terrain capability....three managed to land on Halton's grass runway after all.

Possibly it got a bit fed up looking at the same view day after day and decided it wanted a look down Tiddington Road....which is one of the more expensive in the UK.

There will always be a gob****e with a yellow jacket nearby....

Was the man in the left hand seat an ex Vulcan pilot?

​​​​​​The TBAG Buccaneers and the BCWM Jaguar always use first reference for speed from a GPS Speedo on a mobile phone. They also have worked out from the ODM the info for conditions of the day and time /distance. ASI can be another instrument used, it is never the primary (as not accurate at low speeds) and never alone in the two organisations mentioned. My comments about this on their FB group are not complimentary. Seems they have always allowed ego to overtake common sense in previous runs where they end up just short of the end of the runway.. They too a risk too far and are lucky that their airframe still has legs on it. Just been chatting to another CWJ fast taxi driver and he is nothing but damming about the professionalism shown yesterday.

A hand held satnav might have been useful

Wellesborne is a FISO unit; they can't clear it for a high speed taxy.

What sort of anti-skid system does the Vulcan have?
If it is MaxArret type, I would have expected to see some rubber on the runway as the brakes locked and then released, assuming someone had there toes firmly on the pedals.

Amazing to see the boring "health and safties" wade in as usual. GET A LIFE!!

And with one mighty bound, he was -oh bugger.

Fair enough if they were playing with their own toys in private. However, this came very close to being an event where it went through the hedge and hit passing traffic, at which point we would be into a Shoreham Pt 2. If that were to occur then just as we have seen airshows and historic jet operations hughly affected then similar taxi runs would be closely controlled or scrapped even if they were sensibly undertaken.
These type of operations have been under the radar for a while (perhaps excepting the Bruntingthorpe Victor) They will only remain so if they are performed sensibly and H and S professionals aren't given a reason to investigate.

Any news on how the recovery operation is progressing?

Exactly this! Nothing to do with Health and Safety zealousness, everything to do with ensuring you have a comprehensive and complete safety and risk assessment for an aviation event involving the general public. I'm sure all the Hi-Viz yellow jacket jokes are just as hilarious to the families of the 11 deceased at Shoreham as they are here.