RW 23 was also OK for a 707.

I saw a BA 747 land on 23 once...

That sounds dodgy, it reminds me of another..

More on the VC-10 RB-211 Test Bed here: https://www.vc10.net/History/Individual/XR809.html

Well, I can well remember landing on 23 at Heathrow in 1984 when I was flying the DC-10-30 and if it had been "only 6,500 feet" that might have got my attention. As it was, it was a complete non-event.

Incidentally, when I was flying DC-10s for Fred, I met one of my old RAF co-pilots overhead Gander one night. I was en route from LAX to LGW and he was flying a VC-10 from IAD to BZZ. He had 139 passengers on board and I had 345 plus 10 tons of freight under the floor. He was burning just a little bit more fuel than I was (somewhere around 18,000 lbs per hour).

There is no doubt that the VC-10 was a wonderful bit of kit but it was very hard to make it a commercial success.

A quick measure of it on google maps indicates that it was about 7400 feet.

Not just VC10s. Concorde could and did (Exeter, 6,800 feet, 2000m) land on that length of DRY runaway. Vref 160 k, no spoilers but wonderful carbon brakes !

Interesting point on the VC10 /Tristar. I was loaned from BA. to GulfAir when they were changing to the 1011.A dispatcher showed me a VC10 and Tristar fuel plans, almost identical. VC10, 130 ish pax, TriStar 300 plus !

Cosford? 3600ft..... Ok it was a BA one, but still a VC-10!

Wasn’t the whole point of the VC-10 to be able to go into hot, high and short fields? To connect the empire?

Not quite. "21 June 2015 Delivery via M6 motorway and Shifnal of 93-ft long main fuselage section to RAFM Cosford – for positioning on airfield for initial reassembly."

Got to say he's right, the BA one landed there I know i watched it land. Took the tops of the trees, very impressive. Early eighties I think.

Comparing the VC10 with a TriStar is comparing different generations of aircraft. How about compared to a 707? Or a Conway 707? Or a Convair 990?

Jackonicko,

OK,

707= 865 sold.

VC10 =54 sold.

How about that?

Cosford has had two VC10s as part of the museum. When it was still the Aerospace Museum, it was home to the BA collection which included VC10 'Victor Mike', which was flown in at some point in 1979/1980 as the collection was assembled. BA provided funding for the upkeep of the aircraft, but withdrew this support in the early 2000s. By that point, the 'mission' of Cosford had changed, after the 'Aerospace Museum' moniker was dropped, and the Trustees of the RAFM, AIUI, were unwilling to spend money on BA airframes when their duty was to RAF and Cold War types rather than civilian airframes (I have a very dim recollection that this is why the Britannia was repainted in RAF colours) Most of the BA aircraft were broken up with some (all?) of the fuselages/nose sections preserved and dispersed to other collections (the Viscount survived intact and went to East Fortune, I think it was), and 'Victor Mike's' fuselage now resides at Brooklands.
Edit - Wrong; the 1-11 is still intact and outside at East Fortune; the 707 was meant to go there in one piece as well, but only the forward fuselage survives.

Cosford was thus lacking a VC10 for a period until 'Bob' arrived - via the M6 as you say.

I meant with regard to fuel burn. But you knew that, didn't you?

Jackonicko,


Arf!

Yes, the unique sound of four Conways idling after landing and then spooling down at some tropical aerodrome - so often at night - was the cue to alight from the crew transport and go to work!

Returning to the TS's original question: after the fuel crisis of 1973, the high fuel flows on the VC10 did become a commercial disadvantage. The mature B707-320Cs of BCAL (British Caledonian) with their JT3D turbofans had far superior payload-range capability out of major sea-level airfields, of course, and the days of our handful of early-production VC10s were numbered. But, unlike the Seven-ohs in the days before we introduced engine over-boost and increased V-speeds, they were able to do Nairobi/Gatwick direct. Their superior short-hot-high performance provided our commercial department with occasional charter opportunities, including some Greek islands.

In January 1974 I was P2 on a charter flight with 150 pax from Hurn to Tenerife-North. (Our a/c were "Standard" Type 1103s, which had the "super" wing-chord extension and the "combi" freight door.) IIRC, at that time the Bournemouth runway was only 6000 ft, and TCI (as it was then) was nearly 4 hours. Understandably, the skipper elected to do both legs but allowed me to handle the subsequent empty-ferry BOH/LGW. Because it was not one of our regular aerodromes, "Graduated" T/O thrust (using the assumed-temperature method) was not permissible. So rated thrust was used and, as I throttled back (the Conway is an "N2 engine" for in-flight power settings) to climb thrust passing 2000 ft and called for flaps and slats retraction, the VSI was top of scale so I had to start the push-over immediately to avoid busting the initial cleared altitude of 6000 ft and continue reducing thrust to avoid exceeding the flap-limiting speed..

Another slight advantage of the VC10, with its high, tail-mounted engines close together, was that it could operate on runways narrower than the standard 150 ft. So we introduced a schedule to Blantyre-Chileka (via Nairobi) on behalf of Air Malawi, who bought our last remaining VC10 at the end of 1974. IIRC, Chileka width was/is 90 ft. That advantage over the B707 and DC-8, not to mention the wide-bodies, became less important when Malawi switched its main airport to a new capital city; Lilongwe.


And walking around that it doesn’t bode well for its future, panels off underneath, taxi lights on front fuselage full of water for want of resealing or at least a hole drilled in the bottom of the Perspex cover to let it out.. taking parts off the ones in store at Abingdon showed me how rapidly they could deteriorate in a short space of time stored outside. At the very minimum if the panels are off to prevent condensation then stuff nylon mesh up inside to stop bird ingress.

Archimedes. Thanks for that. I stand corrected. Apologies to Dave. I knew there were BA aircraft there "back in the day", but I wasn't aware of the type. I guess at that point I was flying a 737 out of either Stansted or Gatwick, so wasn't involved with the museum.

BA apprentices I believe used to carry out maintenance on them at Cosford, after they withdrew support, that was when they were broken up, the 707 was a particularly rare example being the sole surviving Conway powered 707 If memory serves me correctly.

more

https://www.pprune.org/aviation-hist...-merged-3.html