TriStars to fly again?
 

Tempus Applied Solutions has finalised its acquisition of the TriStars held in storage at Bruntingthorpe - see: https://www.tempus-as.com/media-press-release-L1011.php

:hmm:

This is good to read especially as it seems to have taken an extremely long time. Every time I flew over Bruntingthorpe in the last year or so I thought the deal must have fallen through.

Cool, it might be cheaper for the RAF to contract to use them instead of the voyagers, wouldn't that be ironic.

Still my favourite aircraft after all these years (mil and civ).

Just reading the press release from Tempus (see post #1) about this ..

Am I being thick or can someone who understands more than I about corporate purchases explain something please. Who exactly is the Seller (presumably MoD?) of these a/c and if that's right, why are they being paid with Tempus shares, not cash?

CS

Guess they might possibly do a bit of AAR for a US contract? Still think most likely they will be scrapped at Bruntingthorpe. :sad:
Autoland was an integrated subsystem in the APFDS. Was never "disabled".

OAP

411A must be smiling!

Yes, I hope! :ok: However, capable though the TriStar K/KC tanker is, I think that these airframes are now in the hands of minimal capital operators. The chances that they will land a contract sufficient to support their further use sound slim to me..?

OAP

There was a little misunderstanding by the RAF about how to use the L1011 autoland resulting in a hard landing and, ISTR, that some restrictions on it's use were (unnecessarily) introduced.

ME Aviation Services own them, nothing to do with the MOD, they divested themselves of them in 2014.

-RP

Basil, incorrect handling of the APFDS caused an accident in the early days of RAF TriStar operation. The accident probably tainted the view of Autoland and, crews were not kept qualified for full A/L use. The Autoland system was used for ILS approaches but, CAT1 limits were used with manual landing. This was purely a restriction applied by higher command.

OAP

In 1971 a Royal Air Force Puma had the captains cockpit door fall off whilst returning to Odiham. There was no reason found except the suspicion that the jettison system may have been fiddled with whilst the aircraft was being looked after by army personnel beforehand. As a result of this it was decreed that the cockpit doors be locked permanently and the crew would have to crawl through the cabin to get to the cockpit. Locking the doors would have made no difference to the result if the initial suspicions were correct.

In 1978 a civil Puma had the pilot's door fall off as a result of a massive nav bag being jammed between the seat and the door which migrated forward and pushed the jettison handle and released the door.

Since then Pumas of various marks have flown millions of hours around the world with unlocked doors that have been used for what they were designed for; to enable the pilots to enter the cockpit.

Except the Royal Air Force, who still fly around with their doors locked.

Despite SnottyGilbert response. yes it would.

When you look at the costs of Voyager, you've got to wonder if the projected costs for Tristar wouldn't have been much cheaper.

At least its AAR worked . . .

The seller was ME Aviation Services and the buyer was Tempus Applied Solutions Holding Inc. Tempus is an US Over The Counter (OTC) "Penny Stock" (definition: price less than $5) company - ticker symbol TMPS. OTC stocks are public companies with limited cash resources. They create shares which can be used to purchase assets and to trade publicly.

Since immigrating to the USA, I've self-taught myself to be a top-tier penny stock trader - anyone with national / theatre level ops room experience who can monitor a wide range and enormous volume of screen presented data, spot changes instantly and make mental calculations and decisions rapidly can be very good at it - so I was very interested in this PR.

Shares are often used to complete acquisitions with the seller getting a discounted price [although that didn't happen in this case]. Then, using a combination of PRs and "other means" [which I won't give away here], stocks get "run up" periodically. Members of the public see the move and buy shares at ever increasing prices propelling the price even higher. Along the way, the recipient of the shares [the seller of the Tristars in this instance] can sell the shares and bank a profit if they wish.

Experienced penny stock traders like me will aim to piggy back this move and then sell before the "sell off" - which can be by stealth on the much higher ask / offer price or dramatic and obvious on the lower bid price. Whoever is still holding the shares when the music stops becomes a "bag holder" and has to wait for the price to go higher than the price they bought at while the aircraft seller and the top traders walk away with a nice profit.

Per the 12 March 2018 PR, the aircraft were acquired for 6.730769 M common shares (ie tradable immediately with no time embargo) at a value of $0.52 per share [so for a notional $3.5M]. The seller only gets $3.5M if they wait for share price to get to $0.52 [or much more if they wait for it to go much higher - which is likely].

Also, per the same PR, storage costs between the start of negotiations and completion of the purchase after inspections etc were paid for with 833K shares at a share value $0.18 [$150K].

On the day of the PR, the share price had already been "moved" to $0.1820 and traded 903,379 shares [300 x the previous day's volume] in the range $0.1820 > $0.3799.

On the next day, a further 407,185 shares were traded in the range $0.3499 > $0.177 - so more than enough volume for the seller to offload all 833K shares for considerably more than $0.18 and for penny stock traders to get in on the action as well for up to a 110% profit in minutes / hours.

I saw this move on my scanner but didn't buy in because my area of expertise is in the $0.0001 > $0.0050 range where it is much easier to make greater profits more quickly. However, I did then see the original purchase deal and - noting that the price has never been up to $0.52 - I'm now starting to "scale in" with some small buys around $0.2 as impatient bag holders from 12/13 March sell for a loss.

At some point, the company will obviously be trying to get a USN AAR contract - for instance to support routine AAR requalification sorties - freeing up operational assets to be used on deployments. They already have a 5-year / $25M contract with the USN for EW / threat simulation / target towing using Learjet 35A and Learjet 60.

https://www.tempus-as.com/media-press-release-7.php

Nothing sums up the US penny stock market - for traders and the companies that get their start through it - better than the title of this 80s classic !

Starting to emerge from the mists of time but wasn't it a failure to arm FLARE and also note the absence of the FLARE ARMED caption?
I've no idea why the RAF didn't just accept that there had been an error and train to ensure it wasn't repeated.
It WAS actually a brilliant autoland system which worked better than I did :rolleyes:

And especially ironic after the spate of cabin doors falling off that sadly took some crews with them.

I thought Lockheed cancelled the design authority when the last ones were retired, it will be interesting to see how that and spares for them pans out.

Last year was probably the last flight and a ferry one at that

https://www.airlinereporter.com/2017...returns-skies/

A fine ride, quiet, modern. Often quite smokey engine start first thing in the morning. If it had come to market on time, maybe a different outcome. I remember both UK and USA had to bailout Rolls Royce.

AKA "Pump and dump".
I'm glad to see a fellow trader being profitable, esp. with such volatile instruments.
For me penny stocks are just too "dangerous" and I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole.