Vulcan documentary tonight ch4 1930

Box Brownie said:
Much as I would love to see a Mosquito in flight my greatest regret is that we grounded and sold off for a song the remaining Harriers. I was there at the fence line watching the last mass flight and last landings, a freezing cold day but great. Why on earth did "they" not retain one in a flight ready state?
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Unfortunately the Harrier would have much the same problems as the Vulcan and is even more sophisticated, so qualified engineers to keep one flying are probably even thinner on the ground. Add into the equation the pilots available to fly it and it's probably a non starter. Conversion from a commercial pilot to the Vulcan, is a lot more straightforward, the Harrier is a completely different beast.
Personally I would love to see a Lightning back on the airshow circuit, but not holding out a lot of hope, even though there are several which are almost in airworthy condition.
 
Surely as the Harrier as still flown by the US marines and the Spanish Air Force means that there is still global expertise for ongoing service & maintenance expertise., though of course that is all military. As I understand it not only did we sell all the airframes that flew the last flight though the story was they were just hangered and the pilots walked away and they were left without post flight servicing. We also sold every spare part.......simply all containered up and shipped to a factory in the USA. As for a pilot, ex RAF perhaps?

If a Mosquito is airworthy in Canada maybe one day she could pay us a visit like 'Vera'.

Re Ligthenings - I read that 2 were used in south Africa for paid for flights but one crashed and that grounded the other but I think now flying again.
 
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I stand to be corrected, but I think there might be one Harrier left here, it was at Boscombe Down, but might have moved to Farnborough?
There were rumours a while ago that there was a Navy one stashed away at Culdrose in Cornwall. Wether there is any truth in that I dont know.

For the Mosquito to come across from Canada, pretty sure it would need to be dismantled and shipped over, I would be very surprised if the owners would agree to that.

One other thing to consider is what restrictions the CAA are going to impose on air displays after the Shoreham crash. I suspect that we may have seen the heyday of air displays and the viability of restoring old jet aircraft will take a hit, for a while anyway. Hope I'm wrong.
 
Kermit weeks has one down at his fantasy of flight in Florida. He's planning to return it to flying when new hangers have been built. That's a place that's well worth a visit, so many planes, with the aim to restore all to flying condition. He even has a Lancaster in parts in storage.

Wikipedia has a list of Mosquitos that has survived. Would love to see one flying again.
 
Box Brownie said:
Re Ligthenings - I read that 2 were used in south Africa for paid for flights but one crashed and that grounded the other but I think now flying again.
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That was Thundercity in Cape Town (http://thundercity.com/). I think they ceased flight operations after the Lightning crash in 2009, following criticism of their maintenance programmes, but they still have the aircraft collection.
 
Regarding mosquitos biggin hill heritage hangar announced they will be working with avspecs to see a UK based machine, timescale unknown. I've heard rumours that's not the only UK bound machine, too (and that's excluding the peoples mosquito... Which is at the moment a bag of rusty bits and a bit of plywood).
 
'Twas a really good insight into the work needed to get her ready for flight.

If anyone thinks the Vulcan (and the other aircraft in the "V" fleet) never did anything special they couldn't be more wrong. Those aircraft and their crews deterred the USSR from starting WW3 every second of every day they were in service, just like the Trident fleet do now. That's why it's called a nuclear deterrence and (from the perspective of a squaddie sat in his Chieftain tank just 30km from the East German border) if that's not special I don't know what is.
 
Finally sat down to watch the final flight of the Vulcan :)
 
As an aside; did anyone get to see the flypast of the only (current) airworthy Blackburn Buccaneer which flew over the test match in SA yesterday. I was in the car listening to the match and the commentators mentioned it.

Maybe someone will upload it to You Tube if it was televised or someone filmed it.

I last saw a close up Bucaneer flight in 1974 when I was in the town of DeCocksdorp on the Dutch Island of Texel. A pair of them flew low ove the high street during a NATO exercise. It was a couple of days before then I was walking along the beach that a Dutch F104 Starfighter flew low fow above us!
 
The Widowmaker I seem to recall...
 
kendo1 said:
The Widowmaker I seem to recall...
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Yes - The German Air Force got through many pilots.

They went for a very modified version, the F104G, taking a 'fair weather' interceptor to be an all weather fighter, fighter bomber, reconnaisance aircraft.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-104_Starfighter

An old joke was "If you want to buy a used Starfighter then buy an acre of land, and wait!"

Bob Calvert, the lead singer of Hawkwind did a music album about it called "Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters"

A beautiful aircraft to look at and stunning to hear when I was lucky to see a low level pass along an empty beach!
 
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