Vulcan !!!!!!

[Herr-B]

So what incredibly grown-up interests do you have nowadays?

Please say paintballing, please, please.

 

[fenlandpsychocyclist]

Just scanned this thread, and nobody has mentioned this:

On twitter you can follow @xh558

One of the guys on the aircraft tweets location/heading whenever they're airborne.

Also they are testing apps for android/iphone that will eventually have an integrated
"locator" over the top of google maps.

When the vulcan is in flight it doesn't hang around.
Look at the timings of the position tweets on flying days and you'll see mention of holbeach (lincs) and then lakenheath (suffolk) about 10 minutes later.

P.S: Question for the real techno-proficient aeronautical nerds ... has anyone seen it on planeplotter yet?

 

[Black Sheep]

I don't get it either. I love the experience of the Vulcan in the same way as steam trains or heavy industry, i think a lot of the guns & ammo type programs are bought cheaply from the USA by the fringe TV channels. On the upside there is more and more industrial/engineering heritage stuff being made for TV these days.

I'm the same, guns don't interest me but large aircraft that are technological marvels do.

think about purely the advancement in aviation during the second world war, we practically go from the Tiger Moth to Meteor in less than a decade. Not wanting to belittle nor ignore the horrific events of WW2 which provided the catalyst for the development.
Had WW2 not happened however, they might have just started development work on Concorde last week.

I enjoy marveling at the engineering expertise that has gone into the Vulcan, the Lancaster, the Sunderland with a similar view to that of the 'sounding arch' in Maidenhead, the world's widest flattest brick arches built by Brunell, the same view I see St Paul's cathedral, complete with it's fake (they don't actually touch the ceiling) centre pillars under the dome.

right, I'm off to watch a Fred Dibnah DVD.

 

[swansonj]

I don't know about Coke cans, but I've never understood how some blokes (and I assume it always is blokes) get such a rush out of military hardware. And not just hardware - the fringe TV channels and the shelves in W H Smiths are full of pseudo-authentic Battle Porn from whichever overseas quagmire we have got ourselves into.
This sort of stuff stopped interesting before I was 12, but each to his own.

I think (though I could of course be deluding myself) that my appreciation of Vulcans and Spitfires is similar to my appreciation of well-designed suspension bridges and impressive roof structures like the Olympic velodrome: beauty stemming from the implementation of pure engineering functionality in curves.

 

[Black Sheep]

mmmmmm, curves

 

[ASC1951]

So what incredibly grown-up interests do you have nowadays?

Bizarre, I know, but I cycle.

 

[TVC]

Bizarre, I know, but I cycle.

Weirdo

 

[gbb]

Sounds like the bombing and combat competitions in the states, we often used to scare the americans with what we'd do with a bomber,

one Scotish F4 pilot got a bit upset with someone dropping onto his tail that instead of just accelerating and climbing away as was the norm, he hit full thrust, spun round and went head to head with him - Rowland White, Phoenix Squadron.


escape from a stricken Vulcan I believe involved ejector seats for the flight deck, the other three crew members were down in the belly of the aircraft, they had assistance chairs that helped push the occupant forwards where they would then drop through a hatch in the belly.

It was widely believed that the assistance chair would simply pin the navigator between chair and plotting table.

Thats the ones....dad related this to me years ago and i couldnt remember the circumstances of why they were there, but thats it.

If i could respectfully ask you guys who are not interested, don't get the same buzz from aircraft, whatever their reason for being, military or otherwise, to respect those that do. One mans meat etc etc...there's a thousand posts in this forum ive never read because the topics already told me its something i'm not interested in.....so i don't even bother.

Just for the record, i've never sat there and though about any military aircraft in a 'death dealing, monstrous war machine' kinda way. I see them (and i'd be 99% sure all the other contributors do too) as mechanical marvels, the peaks of aviation design and just plain beautiful to the eyes and ears. Sadly they were products of war, but i'm not sat bouncing on my seat for that reason....thats just bloomin childish.

 

[black'n'yellow]

I really do not like this thread. The Vulcan might be an impressive aircraft but it is a bomber, whose only use is to kill. Sooner it's made into Coke cans the better.

I really do not like this post. Coca Cola might be an impressive company, but they have made billions out of rotting the world's teeth, not to mention making Father Christmas change his clothes from green into red/white. The sooner coke cans are recycled back into aerospace-grade aluminium, the better.

More bombers - less coke

 

[on the road]

I really do not like this thread. The Vulcan might be an impressive aircraft but it is a bomber, whose only use is to kill. Sooner it's made into Coke cans the better.

Thank god you weren't prime minister during WW2 otherwise we'd all be speaking German by now.

 

[Mushroomgodmat]

Speaking of the Vulcan - 200 yards from my frond door we have this

http://instagr.am/p/NTlIm5m1q3/

 

[on the road]

It came to the Southport Airshow.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

I really do not like this post. Coca Cola might be an impressive company, but they have made billions out of rotting the world's teeth, not to mention making Father Christmas change his clothes from green into red/white. The sooner coke cans are recycled back into aerospace-grade aluminium, the better.

More bombers - less coke

And that's before you take into consideration the corporate sponsored execution of union leaders and decimation of natural water supplies in South America. Dangerous things those coke cans

 

[subaqua]

sad sad day. Vulcan will not fly again after 2013 due to wing issues. next year I am going to see it as often as I can in the air.

http://mxm.mxmfb.com/rsps/wlnk/c/1216/r/32344/e/421/t/1

 

[Arch]

The Vulcan has never killed anyone in anger, but by my quick reckoning (and a bit of Googling) 56 crew members have died in accidents since the mid-'50s. It's not a bomber anymore, it is a fantastic piece of engineering heritage that displays for tens or hundreds of thousands of people when it can. If you don't like the thread, don't read it.

And finally, we don't need more coke cans - we just need to recycle all the existing ones.

I heard a fact once. The US buries enough drinks cans in landfill every XXX to make the entire domestic aviation fleet.

Sadly, I can't remember if XXX is a month, a week or a year, so it takes a bit of the info out of it! But even if its a year, that's a lot of cans.

(we fill a large skipsworth of space with aluminium cans in a few weeks, just from a couple of thousand households...)