VC10 retirements............

[grumpyoldb]

Slipping quietly out the back door, VC10's XV109 and XR807 were retired to Bruntingthorpe earlier today, apparently ready for stripping for spares recovery.

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=99326

It's a bit like watching the bathwater going down the drain. Soon the tub will be empty.

 

[Talk Wrench]

There's also a nice little contract going at Brunty for this. £16 per hour limited with a guaranteed 44 hours worked Monday to Thursday for about 10 weeks.

It's a a little gem of a contract. Unique in many ways. If I had no work at the mo, i'd be banging on Brunty's gates. I think Morsons are acting as the agent.

I think it's breakdown, strip and conditioning work.




It could be of interest to someone on the Goat with no work at the minute.

TW

 

[FOMz]

I watched them leave the secret oxfordshire AT station yesterday. I have to admit, its a bit sad to see such workhorses leaving on their final flight.

 

[ROTORHEAD]

I watched them leave the secret oxfordshire AT station yesterday. I have to admit, its a bit sad to see such workhorses leaving on their final flight.

Always sad to see the end of iconic ac. I was at Saints (on VC10 Majors) the day they flew the Bucc's in for "retirement!" It was brilliant to see them arrive but sad knowing their future.

 

[Shackfairy]

Any to be preserved?

Any to be preserved?

Are any VC10's going to an a/c museum?

 

[shettie]

Are any VC10's going to an a/c museum?

Not these ones... - they're being dismantled to support the other 13 (is it?) They showed them arriving at Bruntingthorpe on East Midlands Today last night - always looked such an elegant aircraft (when it wasn't sat on the ground - ass down and nose in the air )

 

[Billy Whizz]

Luckily I'd left the "Team" just before that happened!

 

[Scaley brat]

Always sad to see the end of iconic ac. I was at Saints (on VC10 Majors) the day they flew the Bucc's in for "retirement!" It was brilliant to see them arrive but sad knowing their future.

I was in CTTS at Saints when the Vulcans suffered the same fate, I thought that the success of "Black buck" would have saved a few but it was not to be, it was a very sad sight. ::

 

[theladf]

By the late 80's some of the Victors were being retired, it was always sad when one landed for its last time ever,:S (still serviced the beast though) before being towed to the burning pan to rot and await its fate, (did occasionally go over there to nick engine door fasteners) A few were broken up for spares recovery at Manston, given that the Fire Training School was there at the time once all that was worth recovering had been removed they too went up in smoke!::

 

[euroboysie]

they all go in the end

they all go in the end

was at Manston in the very early 80's when one of the Shackleton's came in to be burnt, think i still have an old shack altimeter in a box in the garage.

 

[Parky]

Its sad to see yet even sadder to see that they are not being replaced as quickly as they are being retired.

Will always remember when the Buccs did the last beat up of Kinloss and just a few short weeks later I saw the main fuselages of a number of them on their side in a local scrappy up in Elgin.

 

[Scaley brat]

always looked such an elegant aircraft (when it wasn't sat on the ground - ass down and nose in the air )

They tore loads of these apart on the old MT skid pan at Saints. If you look on Google maps/Earth, you can still see one where White Elephant now stands ::

 

[JTforever]

2 down, 13 to go. They were past their best a very long time ago.

It's time that they followed the 'rod into the scrapyard. I'll never fly on one again that's for certain.

 

[Stevienics]

Still, fastest subsonic passnger jet on the planet to date as far as I know with 4 sinus clearing conways to chug it along.

If it looks right, it probably is right as we say.

Evolution and environmentalism eh? What mind numbing, satanistic bollicks we have succumbed to.

 

[vim_fuego]

I wonder if people serving in the 50's and 60's (to pluck a time period of decent funding and manning out of the air) got so emotionally attached to aircraft as many seem to do today?

In those days funding and rapidly moving technology moved us to never hang on to to many types of jet for too long before the next shiny one was arriving...These days we have had most of our aircraft for so long its like losing a family member...In 24 years, with the exception of Merlin, C-17 and Typhoon (small training stuff doesn't count) everything else is the same today as I started back at Swinders nearly a quarter of a century ago...

 

[propersplitbrainme]

I wonder if people serving in the 50's and 60's (to pluck a time period of decent funding and manning out of the air) got so emotionally attached to aircraft as many seem to do today?

Don't know, good question.
For me the 'ten' is one of the last symbols of a golden era of aviation, when flying was still an adventure and the arrival of aircraft such as the VC10, Trident, Boeing 707, BAC111 etc really did begin to shrink the globe and make foreign travel accessible to more people. The VC10s, Comets and Brittanias of the RAF took families such as mine to join our fathers, it was usually fathers back then, in postings to far flung destinations such as Singapore, Kenya and Hong Kong. And because of the limited range of the aircraft the journeys often involved stop-overs and night stops in exotic sounding places like Cairo or Khartoum.
And the aircraft themselves had 'soul'. They were mechanical machines, noisy, clockwork aircraft I call them, not the electronic, fuel efficient, fly-by-telly things we go on today.
But thats just me, a bit of an aviation nostalgist.

 

[JTforever]

Nostalgia has no place in today's aviation world though. I'd love to see a few 10's spared the chop and preserved in museum's, I don't want to see them in the sky anymore. Can you imagine the outcry if, god forbid, anything was to happen to one?

It's time they all retired. You'll never get me or my family on one again. (families are banned already of course!)

They pulled the 'rod from service early and with good reason, time the 10 followed in it's footsteps.

 

[propersplitbrainme]

I wasn't saying they should be kept for nostaligic reasons just that their passing, which as you say is long overdue, will mark the end of an era. Its an era I can look back on fondly but of course technology moves on and metal structures seldom get stronger with age.

 

[Downsizer]

They pulled the 'rod from service early and with good reason

Really? Or they pulled it early because of a sustained political style campaign by a small minority of people and they were able to use financial savings as an excuse?

 

[Stevienics]

I don't want to save the ones that are remaining or see a return to the golden age of steam - I am just one amongst millions who believe that the sort of things that they were replaced with (such as the Airbus and the diesel) are boring, ugly and teutonically functional to the point of being about as interesting as women's tennis.