VulcanXH558 update

[Richard B]

50th Birthday Appeal - Update 1 of 4 - Friday 13th November.

Appeal Funding Crisis - Urgent

Our 50th Birthday Appeal to our loyal supporters and the millions who saw us fly this summer was for cash for two key reasons:

· To bolster our depleted reserves, now down to critical levels, to cover daily costs such as rent, wages, insurance;
· To commission and begin work on the Winter Service and life extension modifications to ensure we can deliver the 2010 Birthday Season.

From the small size of the mailbags arriving at Bruntingthorpe, it appears that XH558’s 50th Birthday Appeal has been badly affected by the various postal delays – we are significantly behind where we need to be to reach our £400,000 target by Christmas.

So far, we have received less than £30,000 in donations from 800 donors, from a mailing that went out to 35,000 people. This is a far lower response rate than ever previously experienced.

The total so far amounts to less than 10% of what we need before Christmas! Not only will we not be able to begin the time-critical engineering work, we are looking at the serious prospect of having to shut down the operation. This is now a serious and imminent threat.

With the major proportion of our known and planned funding of £1.6million coming in during the air show season, we have to rely on the Appeal to survive through the winter months

With the desperately slow progress we are currently making, we are finding it more and more difficult to cover our monthly base costs, let alone commit to the work that we need to have done to make it to the 2009 season.

I have to admit that I am now much more nervous about XH558’s future; it seems that unless we can mobilise significantly more support, the day of reckoning may not be far away.

This would be devastating to all those who have fought long and hard over the years to realise the dream. Our goal is so small in comparison to other funding needs, so we must try every avenue in which to succeed.

Our strategy remains to reach out to all those who saw XH558 last year, especially the huge numbers – 1.5 million – that attended the “free” airshows, and ask for their help in supporting XH558, whilst also trying to attract fresh support from others yet to be touched by “The Vulcan Effect”!

We need your help with this effort – which is why we have chosen to call the 50th Birthday Appeal a “staged appeal”.

We need you to act as the secondary stage of our campaign! We have released the primary – the 50th Birthday Appeal itself. We now need you to multiply the effectiveness of the Appeal many-fold in a chain-reaction, by taking the Appeal out to everywhere and anywhere.

Contact your local newspapers and radio stations, put up the posters, post on your blogs, email your friends and colleagues, link back to us from Websites you run – all will be valuable in taking out our message.

Please let us know if you have any questions or comments, if you run into problems or have new ideas, or if you need posters and leaflets: give the office a call on 0116 247 8145.

We continue to work on leads and contacts in the hope of getting some widespread National coverage soon that will make the difference – it is hoped we can achieve this before it is too late.

My wife Suzanne and I were in London last Sunday for the Remembrance Day commemorations at the Cenotaph. It was a truly emotional experience, and a huge reminder of how much we all owe those who have served, and are serving, in our Armed Services.

It was also a strong reminder of XH558’s role in “Honouring the Past”, in particular those thousands of service personnel who supported the RAF’s “V-Force” in its strategic deterrent capacity in the 1950’s and 1960’s. In John Milton’s words, “they also serve who only stand and wait”: never more true than in the case of the V-Force personnel who were on standby for so many years. We must keep XH558 flying to ensure that this message is not forgotten.


Kind regards

Robert Pleming

Chief Executive

Winter Engineering Plan: Aircraft Life Extension Update 2 of 4 - 13th November 2009


Following recent planning work for the Winter Engineering programme, I thought that you would appreciate a glimpse of some of what is going to happen, and the timescale constraints that result.

Probably the most significant project is the embodiment of the wing fatigue life extension modification on the bottom of the front spar on each wing.

The Avro Vulcan is a “safe life” aircraft, where the airframe strength has been verified on a fatigue life specimen airframe, which in the case of the Vulcan went through 41,000 cycles – simulated flights – in the 1960s.

As the result of the fatigue test, the Vulcan was granted an ultimate life of 320 fatigue index units. However during the test, various weaknesses and defects were discovered over time that resulted in repairs – these repairs turned into fatigue life extension modifications for the Vulcan fleet.

A good example is the strengthening added to the rear spar during the restoration to flight in 2007 – Modification 2222.

We have always known that further fatigue life extension modifications will be required to ensure that XH558 can continue flying. However the next stages of life extension have to be added earlier than we had expected.

Whilst XH558 enjoyed an extremely successful summer season, we have consumed rather more fatigue life than planned, owing to the bumpy conditions experienced in transit at low level. (We are currently not permitted to transit through cloud to smooth air above.) We have now used up about 250 fatigue units, against a current clear limit of 252 units, giving us only 10-20 flying hours until the next modifications are due, including the strengthening of the bottom of the front spar.

We have therefore decided to bring these modifications forward from Winter 2010-11 to this winter.

A further important complication arises due to the fact that XH558 is now the “fleet leader” – no other Vulcan has flown for as many hours, or consumed as much fatigue life. The practical consequence of this is that the front spar strengthening modification, whilst embodied on the fatigue test specimen, was never added to a Vulcan from the RAF’s fleet.

The modification is simple in principle: the replacement of the set of plates at the front of the undercarriage bay, by a larger set of plates. Pictures will be on our web site soon showing examples of this type of work.

To achieve this, a set of drawings needs to be produced from the available data, and a process for removing the existing plates and adding the new ones must be created. This all takes time, and must be scheduled in to the already extremely busy design office at Marshal Aerospace. After that, the materials and fasteners have to be ordered – do we have a lead time problem? – and finally the modification added to XH558.

The uncertainties on timescale mean that if we are to deliver a full display season in 2010, we need to commit the design activity now, and that means paying over £100,000 up front.

If we don’t proceed now, it becomes more and more likely that we would be limited to the 10-20 flying hours currently available, which would give us precious few hours in front of the public after test, currency and display authorisation flights.

There are other, easier engineering activities which we must carry out this winter, but their additional costs all go towards the target that the 50th Birthday Appeal is planned to achieve.

We know we can fly XH558 safely on for quite some time, but as we enter unexplored territory, we have to do things properly, and there are costs that result.

This is why were urgently need your help with the 50th Birthday Appeal; the implications of not making our funding target of £400,000 by Christmas are very worrying.

With best wishes

Robert Pleming
Chief Executive


50th Birthday Appeal – Feedback Request - Update 3 of 4


So far, we have received less than £30,000 in donations from 800 donors, from a mailing that went out to 35,000 people.

At this stage in our financial year, our reliance on public donation support is far greater than in the spring, summer and autumn when we are flying, so it is vital to XH558’s future that we are successful with the 50th Birthday Appeal.

We need your feedback now to understand how the Appeal is going.

Please could you send an email to appealquestions@vulcantothesky.org

We need to know:

· Have you received the 50th Birthday Appeal leaflet and poster etc?

· Have you, or will you, make a donation or standing order commitment?

· If you have decided not to make a donation, please could you indicate why?

· Do you have any ideas on what we should be doing better?

This email is going to about 5,000 people; please would you respond, since we need to know how we can improve.

With best wishes
Robert Pleming
Chief Executive


50th Birthday Appeal - Update 4 of 4 - Friday 13th November

If we need any reminder of what has been achieved with this globally unique restoration project, please watch this short trailer.

http://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=3622 ... 079406d03a" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

See the reaction of the youngsters in the closing sequence.

You can make the difference by visiting our Appeal pages here:

http://www.vulcantothesky.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thank you.

Robert Pleming (Chief Executive).

[Sheff]

Well, it just serves to confirm what I've always said and thought, that the aircraft would be good for one display season or maybe two, and then the hype and excitement would drift-off onto the next big thing. Pleming's "last chance" pleas have become tedious and meaningless. Blaming the lack of response on the Post Office is just laughable. People haven't sent money because they are no longer interested - it's that simple.

Looking at the latest blurb, you get the feeling that the only way forward would be to forget about the fatigue modifications and get the aircraft through another display season and then call it quits. The argument for bringing forward the modifications just doesn't make sense. This endless hand-to-mouth struggle was engaging enthusiasts for a while but Pleming can't expect it to carry-on forever. He never seems to grasp that while he's sat there raking-in a load of money, people are less and less inclined to keep on sending him more, in the hope that some of it will actually be spent on the aircraft.

I think the best plan is to hope that 558 survives for another season and get out there to grab as many photographs as you can! After that, Pleming will probably have to go and find himself another gravy train to jump on to.

[T_J]

Dr Pleming has already announced that he will be stepping down shortly. He discussed it in interview and it was revealed in the 'The Vulcan' - Vol 2 No 12 Summer 2009. I expect he is planning to go before the end of the year?

TJ

[turbosix]

People may be less inclined to donate this year after the Vulcan's balls-up last year at waddo. I remember donating £10 to the lady walking around collecting for the Vulcan, and then minutes later hearing that the Vulcan's permit to fly had expired. Annoying.

[Sheff]

Indeed, Pleming did claim to be stepping-down but I've seen no sign of him leaving just yet. Be interesting to see if the situation improves when he's gone but I fear that the damage has been done now and the public's initial rush of enthusiasm has been exhausted.

If what they are saying is true (and there are obviously never any guarantees with these people) then I would imagine that they'll be forced to abandon the projected modification programme and soldier-on into next year. I seriously doubt if the aircraft's flying schedule will survive beyond that time scale unless a miracle occurs.