Vulcan XH558
Today really is a historic day. I shall tell you why:
Avro Vulcan XH558 made its first successful test flight today, lasting 31 minutes. It’s the first time she’s flown since 1992, when she flew at an air display at RAF Cranfield.
10 years of hard work, £6.5 million in public money, thousands of man hours and lot of determination has enabled XH558 to return to the skies. It is now the worlds only flying Vulcan, with two other Vulcans (XL426 and XM655) remaining in taxable condition.
I really can’t wait to see her in the flesh - she’s rumoured to take to the air show circuit next year. Nothing’s confirmed yet. Today’s flight was merely a test flight to ensure everything is how it should be, and XH558 hasn’t got its CAA permit to fly certificate yet. However, hopefully she will have it soon, and we’ll be able to see her a lot more.
From http://www.tvoc.co.uk:
“The return of Avro Vulcan XH558 to the air today in a 34-minute test flight marks the spectacular end of a 10-year effort, and the start of a brand new phase in the life of this amazing aircraft.
This huge achievement, unique in the history of aviation, owes everything to a massive team effort. The financial support of many tens of thousands of members of the public and the Heritage Lottery Fund, added to a superb contribution from Marshall of Cambridge Aerospace, the support of BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce and many other aerospace companies, and of course the Trustees and employees of the Vulcan to the Sky Trust, made this happen. “
It really has been an awesome day for British Aviation.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3662494.stm
A black weekend
Many of you would have heard the news this weekend. The aviation world has been plagued with multiple crashes and fatalities this weekend.
I’d like to give my biggest condolences to the families of the people who lost their lives in crashes on Saturday and Sunday. The world rally champion Colin McRae and his five year old son Johnny died along with two friends when Colin’s helicopter, which he was piloting, crashed in the grounds of his home in Scotland.
The next crash which I heard about was that a Hurricane had crashed down at Shoreham Airshow, killing the pilot. The identity of the pilot and Hurricane has now been revealed. 49 year old pilot Brian Brown, of the Real Aeroplane Company, died when the Hurricane he was piloting crashed into a hill during a mock dogfight with Spitfires and Messerschmitt over Shoreham, Sussex.
It has now been confirmed that the Hurricane was a Mk XII (BD707) - G-HURR from Duxford. This fact is irrelevant at this sad time, and the inclusion of this fact in this blog post makes it seem that I think that the Hurricane is more important than the pilot. This is not the case, I’d like to clear that up. RIP.
Details are now emerging of a passenger jet crashing in Thailand.
What a sad, black weekend for the aviation world. We’ve lost a lot of hard-working, loved, dedicated people. My deepest, sincerest condolences to everyone who has suffered loss this weekend.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6997610.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/6997875.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/6997270.stm
http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?p=1162090
Rest in peace.
Jamie.
Site, Flying Legends and METALLICA!
Hey
Well where to start - as you might have noticed, and as one person actually emailed me to ask me why (thanks Roy), my site has been off line for the past week. This has been due to the unforeseen fact that I hadn’t renewed my hosting account (domain and hosting were both up for renewal at the same time) and so my site went off line. I couldn’t renew anything before due to lack of money. I guess my host is pretty cheap at £30 a year for hosting for an *alright* hosting spec and because my site doesn’t use a great deal of server resources (only about 4 or 5 gig a month on average traffic) my current host suffices.
In other news apart from hosting, I’ve been pretty busy in the last week. I like being busy, except last weak was*really* tiring. Saturday 7th July I went to the annual war bird gathering up at Duxford - the Flying Legends air show. I’ve upload shed loads of pics (only a few compared to the amount I did take, most of which were crap) to my gallery. You can find the album here. I was really looking forward to the airs how seeing as the star of the show would be a Lockheed P-38 Lightning nicknamed “Glacier Girl” which was part of a flight of 6 P-38 Lightnings and 2 B-17 Flying Fortresses flying from North America to the UK in 1942. The pilots of the mission, called “Operation Bolero” downed over Greenland due to bad weather and ended up landing on the ice. The crew were rescued after several days of being on the ice; however the aircraft were left there. In 1992 however, an expedition to the site of the crash landings resulted in one (and the least damaged) P-38 being lifted from 268 foot of ice. A ten year restoration project began and on 26th October 2002 P-38 41-7630 took to the skies for the first time, 60 years after being ditched over Greenland.
“Operation Bolero II” was finally organized, and preparations were made for the second attempt at the mission. This time, just with the P-38, which by now had been dubbed “Glacier Girl” and a recently restored P-51D Mustang (TF-51D 44-84847) called “Miss Velma” which was being flown over to the UK to become The Fighter Collection’s latest acquisition. However, Glacier Girl’s involvement in Operation Bolero II ended abruptly on 26th June when coasting out of Goose Bay, Labrador, Canada with “Miss Velma”, she started trailing coolant. Steve Hinton (pilot of Glacier Girl who had also flow every previous post-restoration flight in her) managed to get her back to Goose Bay where she was inspected. The problem turned out to be major - a cooling vent had popped off the right engine. All 4 aircraft returned to Goose Bay (P-38 and P-51 with support aircraft in the form of a Cessna Citation Sovereign and a Pilatus PC-12) and so the flight continued once more without Glacier Girl. The right engine will now need a massive overhaul, and there are rumors that both engines might be replaced. Miss Velma eventually made it to Duxford on July 4th after being weathered in Scotland for a few days. Hopefully Glacier Girl will make an appearance at Duxford soon - Operation Bolero III is in talks, so hopefully we’ll see her at Legends 2008.
In other news away from air shows, I saw Metallica at Wembley Stadium on Sunday 8th July. It was a really long, tiring day seeing as I’d been up to Cambridge a day before and been at Legends all day. However, it was a GREAT concert - Metallica are far better live than I thought they would be. The supports were Mastodon, Machine Head and HIM. I can safely say that I didn’t really like Mastodon, and HIM were pretty much hated throughout their set. With the crowd all shouting “fuck off back to Finland”, I’m kinda assuming a lot of people didn’t like them. Ah well, I personally quite like HIM. I think they’re a good band - everyone’s different though. I went with a few mates and we got on a coach organized by our local newspaper which picked us up at Clacton Station and took us straight to Wembley. Was a good day! I’ve put pictures up here.
Gonna go and book my driving test now, going to see when they have dates etc!
Chow!
I haven’t…
Posted for a while, so here I am. I guess it’ll be a long one, but I’m bored and I think I might as well write something here. Post a comment if you’re gonna read it!
I’ve been doing a fair bit of stuff lately to be honest, which probably kinda explains the lack of work on the site and blog posts. Right now I’m watching Panorama on BBC One into the whole “computer revolution” and a study looking into whether there is a clear link between WiFi and health problems. Roughly every school, a lot of homes and work places are now installing wireless networks etc. It’s looking into whether there’s an impact on our health caused by mobile phone technology and wireless network technology. There are a lot of debates either side of the argument - should we have and use WiFi (particularly in schools) or not? I think we should, from what I’ve seen, there have no adverse effects to the use of WiFi, however I do see both sides of the argument.
There might be a few people around who “have” been affected by the use WiFi about, however there amount of use and coverage it has now, it’s pretty much unavoidable. If there was really a problem, then surely there would be a far bigger outcry and public response from it? Maybe my view is wrong, but it’s what I think. Surely, if there was a problem, a *lot* of people would have symptoms and problems about it. One woman on the show is apparently sensitive to WiFi and has undergone tests. It’s true, there are electro-sensitive people, however the UK doesn’t recognise it as a disability, whereas for instance, Sweden do. Also, don’t you think that they would be affected by standard phone masts and radio stations?
In terms of what I’ve been up to, I guess it’s a fair bit. Last month (well, 22nd April,) LJ took me to see Trivium at Ipswich’s Regent Theatre. It was an awesome concert, and although it was in a theatre, really exceeded my expectations. I really enjoyed myself and have uploaded a few photos to my picture gallery. Also, me and three of my buddies have gone and got tickets for Metallica’s July 8th concert at the new Wembley Stadium as well, which will be extremely good seeing as it’s Metallica’s only gig in the UK in over 16 years I believe.
College is going ok. We’ve signed off media now because we’ve done all the work for this year and have no summer exams in it. I had a general studies exam today, as I did last Monday. I’ve only got IT left now, which will be a 15 hour exam spread over 2 weeks.
I also went upto Duxford at the weekend (Sunday 20th May) and went to their Spring Air show. It was the first air show I’ve been to this season so far, and hope to go to a lot more. The theme of the airshow was to commenenrate the 25th ending of the Falklands War, so it was a rather moving and rememrable display. I was surprised to see a Bell UH-1H Helicopter there, which to be honest, was unknown to me before the airshow. The UH-1H Iroquois, more commonly known as G-HUEY or “IROQUOIS” - serial number “ 13560″ was the star of the show. It was a “trophy” of the Falklands, seeing as it was captured from the Argentine Army and brought back to the UK at the end of the war. Now it’s owned by three Huey enthusiasts and looks forward to a good display season. A full write-up and pictures are coming, I’m in the process of sorting the photos out.
My driving lessons are going rather good at the moment, got another one on Wednesday after college and then I’ve got my theory test booked for Saturday 2nd of June. I’m happy with the way it’s going at the moment, my driving instructor Paul says that he reckons I can do my test at the end of June. I’ll get it booked up soon when he thinks I’m ready for it, and will see whether the little men at the DSA wanna give me a licence or not! Laura’s also started driving now, so hopefully we’ll be both soon be driving about!
The summer is on the way, and I hope will be fantastic. As you can probs gather from blog posts last summer, summer 06 was the best summer I’ve ever had, and I don’t know whether I’ll ever be able to beat that experience again. It really did rock - I hope this summer will be just as good, if not better. People will be driving and it’ll be good. Me, Bryn, Dean, Ricky and whoever hope to go on a few roadtrips etc, which will be schweet! If I pass my test that is.
Anyway, I better go. Have fun people!
Jamie.
A busy week…
Haven’t posted for a while…so here I am…
I’ve got an extremely busy week ahead of me, what with Frinton Musical Theatre’s Summer Show all this week as well as my school’s annual fashion show. The summer holidays are coming near so I WILL (that’s WILL) be able to do some stuff to the site luckily. I want to get this done, as my website is a major project and past time of mine so it’s a shame to let the site go to ruin and not get anything done or updated on it.
Duxford Flying Legends was friggin’ excellent, I’m happy to say. Although I only went to the second day (Sunday 10th July) I still saw heck of a lot. The review is coming so watch out over the next 2 weeks. Also I’ll be sorting out the whole design and content side of Jamierees.co.uk Aircraft which needs to be done as it has been waiting for a long time for an overhaul.
Thanks Richard!
After much worry about her flying future, it has now been announced that Richard Branson will step in to cover the extra insurance costs on IWM Duxford’s Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress “Sally B”. It had been grounded due to the fact that the EU (European Union) had imposed extra liability insurance costs totaling an extra £1,000 per flying hour. The legendry B-17 bomber, which only flys about 20 hours a year was grounded after the IWM found that they simply could not meet the extra cost.
At the Duxford VE Day Anniversary Airshow Sally B was grounded and open for the first time to members of the public. I paid my £2 to go inside and take a good look around and felt that I had helped (even though a tiny tiny tiny bit) to find the extra £20,000 the Imperial War Museum needed. The future of Sally B was still unclear until this week when Richard Branson agreed to fund the IWM with the extra funds required to get her off the ground again using his Airline Virgin Atlantic.
The article from ThisisLondon reads:
“Sir Richard Branson has stepped in to ensure the UK’s last remaining airworthy Flying Fortress B-17 bomber will be able to take part in next month’s fly-past over Buckingham Palace to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
Sir Richard’s airline Virgin Atlantic is to cover the costs of the liability insurance of the American-made plane - the Sally B - to enable it to continue flying for the next three months.
New EU regulations had resulted in a rocketing of insurance costs and it was feared that the plane, based at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford in Cambridgeshire, would not be able to take part in the July 10 fly-past.”
This means that for the next three months Sally B can fly for the July 10th flypast at Buckingham Palace as well as Duxford’s Flying Legends Airshow of which I will be attending (stick revising for that week :))
Jamie.
Duxford VE Day Anniversary Airshow Review
I’ve finally got around to posting most of my review of Duxford’s VE Day Anniversary Airshow almost a month since the actual airshow. I haven’t totally finished it in terms of the full participating aircraft as I have a lot on my plate at the moment, however I’ll finish it as soon as I can. A bulk of the review is there though.
You can find it here
Jamie. 