The Vulcan XH558 & General Aviation Thread

[Dominic Owen]

I know I'm not alone in wanting to see a Victor back in the air alongside the Vulcan. If I understand it correctly, the one at Bruntingthorpe is grounded by default of age and service hours, more than anything, but the word "unrestorable" has been firmly stamped on them because of the way they were constructed. So advanced and ahead of it's time that we can't fix it 50 years on!

[Renegadenemo]

Big problem with the Victor is the Conway engines because R-R just isn't able to support them, which is a shame.

[Stuart Baker]

Big problem with the Victor is the Conway engines because R-R just isn't able to support them, which is a shame.

...they do for the higher thrust version on the VC10...

The real issue will be airframe fatigue life. Anything is technically possible if you really really wanted to spend huge sums of money, but I believe that like the Vulcan, the life of the Victors is referenced to a fatigue test specimen. This means that, unless you can extend the testing of the specimen it isn't possible to demonstrate an extension to the safe life of the aircraft, or to know which bits to replace to re-life it.

You could of course build a replica, but I don't think we talk about that type of thing on this forum.

S

[Renegadenemo]

...they do for the higher thrust version on the VC10...

The real issue will be airframe fatigue life. Anything is technically possible if you really really wanted to spend huge sums of money, but I believe that like the Vulcan, the life of the Victors is referenced to a fatigue test specimen.

Hadn't thought of the VC10 - I thought they were retired and we'd bought some fat tanker things from the Americans. I'd love to see R-R's corporate face if someone turned up with a warty old Victor and threatened to spanner a set of VC10 engines into it, mind you.

It's my understanding that the Victor ended up knackered because it was forced from its high altitude role into a low level one where the Vulcan didn't suffer so badly because it was so strong but the Victor soon started to fall apart.
The Victor fleet was structurally re-lifed in the mid seventies for fourteen years and I think in the end they were flying about with an extra ten tons of steelwork in them to hold them together but that might've been the Vulcan. They're all way beyond their use by date now but I wonder if a case could be made to get a few more hours out of an airframe based on a thorough visit with modern NDT techniques.

Stuart? You're the aerospace man...

[Stuart Baker]

They're all way beyond their use by date now but I wonder if a case could be made to get a few more hours out of an airframe based on a thorough visit with modern NDT techniques.

Modern NDT will find all sorts of exciting things - albeit you may have to periodically access some places that really weren't designed to be accessed. Problem is that when you find something, without a detailed finite element model, you don't know the consequences of what you've found. Oh, and of course to generate that FE model, you also need a set of 3D CAD models. Since every aircraft in that era was lovingly hand-built, the relationship between design and production engineers was characterised by the phrase "we can draw anything you can make", so any drawings you may have will of course be an approximation.

It's good fun to get Robert Pleming (of Vulcan fame) on this topic as he has researched every option to keep the Vulcan flying beyond the extended fatigue limit and without many many millions it really isn't going to happen.

S

[Renegadenemo]

We got involved in something like that once upon a time.

The powers that be decided that the very bowels of the combustor cans would now form part of the inspection regime for flying Orph's simply because the kit came available to get a look, and what d'you suppose they found?

We had a set of cans that came out of a lake that proved in perfect order according to the rules of said inspection and we'd have quietly traded them to keep a gnat in the air but in the end the problem went away for reasons I didn't really want to know about at the time. My limited memory of events is that some well-heeled aeroplane people kicked up a fuss and got it sorted but that could be a million miles from what really happened.

We had K7's frame x-rayed and crack tested before declaring it fit for another fight yet it failed by modern standards for the welds that you can see by looking are not going to fall apart anytime soon so there's a real disadvantage in hauling old kit through modern processes. Likewise, the number of times I've been welding original material and some ugly inclusion has bubbled to the surface that was obviously in there from day-one yet it never made the slightest difference at the time.

My all time favourite is a legend on one of the sponson drawings that says, 'Fill any large gaps with Loy filler'. But Norris Bros. didn't actually draw any large gaps... Imagine that approach in this modern age and yet it's from an age when we were building the first supersonic aircraft and a fleet of bombers that would fly for fifty years.

It's sort of sad that the Vulcan will ultimately die of paperwork and procedure rather than a fitter infinitely acquainted with the machine giving it the nod for another season and being right rather than some notional deadline but I suppose that's how it ought to be. It's just I can't help feeling that a little bit of the spirit of that bygone era gets lost forever in that approach.

We get the occasional scaredy cat who tells us that K7 is too valuable to risk and should be wrapped in cotton wool and plonked straight in the museum without passing go whilst missing the fact that she's a big hunk of metal that even Donald and 34 years of immersion couldn't kill off and they sadden me too. This whole project is aimed at bringing back to life the whole Campbell, Bluebird, British engineering of the 1950s thing in its purest form if only for a moment. The derring-do, the 'once you've started you're already past the point of no return', the going down into the arena for a punch on the nose... Just imagine how disgusted DMC would be if we bottled it now!

[Terminator]

Well said that man, that has got to be the best written reason to date that has been put forward as a genuine reason why K7 should run again. Love the quotes and I to feel sure that D.M.C would be absolutely disgusted if we bottled it now. Not to mention Leo and the rest of the original team.
When I read this below it gave me renewed determination to get the job done. Way to go Mr. Smith hats off to you Sir.

Novie



We get the occasional scaredy cat who tells us that K7 is too valuable to risk and should be wrapped in cotton wool and plonked straight in the museum without passing go whilst missing the fact that she's a big hunk of metal that even Donald and 34 years of immersion couldn't kill off and they sadden me too. This whole project is aimed at bringing back to life the whole Campbell, Bluebird, British engineering of the 1950s thing in its purest form if only for a moment. The derring-do, the 'once you've started you're already past the point of no return', the going down into the arena for a punch on the nose... Just imagine how disgusted DMC would be if we bottled it now!

[jonwrightk7]

hope all museologists and the HLF read the above quote!! top hole old boy

[Mike Bull]

Back to V-bombers for a minute...could the Victor do this? (0:36)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffJ0WX1Xct0&feature=related

...and here's a clip of the chap who was behind the stick when that Victor went for a little jaunt, explaining what happened-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGjPu6DPzWU&feature=related

Two fab machines.

[Renegadenemo]

Back to V-bombers for a minute...could the Victor do this?

Not sure if it ever did but did the Vulcan ever go supersonic?
And wasn't that white Vulcan the one that piled so ignominiously into a field of brussels sprouts next to Heathrow as the world's media awaited it's return from an empire-wide tour?

As for 'Courageous Bob's' (or was it 'Heroic Bob'?) tale of being the last Victor pilot, anyone who attended the BAPC meeting at Sunderland with me care to comment?

Truth be told I love both of those old machines but give me the Victor every time. As Clarkson once said, tights and stockings do exactly the same job.

Mike is obviously a tights man.