Lots of electrical controls in this 1950s piece of engineering excellence.

Fast and low.

and still working today.!


I can't get the link to work with sound and vision. If you can't go to You Tube and type in Vulcan Beachy Head. Now I have spoiled the surprise.

-------------------------
John Peckham

http://www.astutetechnicalservices.co.uk/

Edited: 19 August 2012 at 07:50 PM by John Peckham

She's a beauty.

The very first time I visited an airshow was at Barton, Manchester back in the 90's.

One of the stars was XH558 on one of it's last appearances with the RAF.
Got me hooked. The sound never really comes over anything like lifelike on recordings. You feel it as much as you hear it!

It's taken thousands of hours and millions of pounds to keep it airworthy and get it flying again. A very dedicated team has committed their everything to realise their dream.
I was lucky to see it very briefly when it made a cursory pass at Blackpool's mini airshow last year.

I read somewhere that it was involved in an incident/failure of some kind that was going to cause an expensive grounding earlier this year. Nice to see they got it airworthy again.

That's some real nice footage. There is plenty more on the web

-------------------------
"I learned very early the difference between knowing
the name of something and knowing something". - Richard P. Feynman

I`ve seen the Vulcan overhead a couple of times at Airshows past.
Lovely.
However if in wartime one was to fly overhead then the sound and vibration must be most terrifying

-------------------------
Regards,
Ebee (M I S P N)

Knotted cables cause Lumpy Lektrik

I was at an airshow many years ago when one of those puled up into a vertical climb with afterburners on over the airfield. The earth moved for me.

Probably why I am now deaf.

This post belongs in T*itter or Facebook! Aircraft are excluded from BS 7671. Don't mention the war.

Regards

John

What wonderful memories this provokes.

Rod

KFH

No afterburners on any Vulcan.

The Rolls Royce Olympus engine that it was fitted with was developed and fitted with afterburners for the TSR2 aircraft and later developed and used in Concorde with re-heat.

Ahead of it's time a piece of British engineering excellence. mostly all electric flying controls, terrain following radar, electronic navigational bombing system and electronic counter measures. In the 1960s as a trial some RAF Vulcans were able to penetrate the USs state of the art NORAD air defence systems undetected which the yanks thought was full proof, scared the SH1T out of the yanks.

Designed to fly at 60,000 feet and penetrate soviet air defences and deliver a stand off nuclear weapon and then when the soviets improved their defences to fly low with terrain masking and still get to the target. Flying low really punishes the air frame but the Vulcan was strong enough to do it and handle like a fighter as the U Tube video shows.

We had all those engineers with the skills to produce such a ground breaking piece of design and manufacturer it but we have now lost our way, what happened?

-------------------------
John Peckham

http://www.astutetechnicalservices.co.uk/

Nothing really - we just didn't value what we had till it was gone and globalisation caught us unawares - call it the peace dividend if you like

Think Jodi Mitchell - "Big Yellow Taxi"

Could we do it again ? - for sure we could, UK PLC doesn't work very well until the ***** hits the fan in my experience - then we do just fine.

regards

OMS

-------------------------
Failure is always an option

what happened?


Margaret Thatcher - it`s all her fault

-------------------------
Regards,
Ebee (M I S P N)

Knotted cables cause Lumpy Lektrik

So what your trying to say is its a tin can with a couple of jet engines on, that is just a delivery system for weapons of mass destruction to cause death, horrific injury and displacement to tens of thousands of people in the name of England, quite shocking when you think of it.

regards

-------------------------
"Take nothing but a picture,
leave nothing but footprints!"
-------------------------
"Oh! The drama of it all."
-------------------------
"You can throw all the philosophy you like at the problem, but at the end of the day it's just basic electrical theory!"
-------------------------

Edited: 20 August 2012 at 06:05 PM by rocknroll

RnR

A couple of errors there. It has 4 engines and is made mostly of aluminium. Thank heavens it was never used for it's original purpose.
However it did do a 8000 mile trip to drop 21 x 1000 iron bombs on the airfield in the Falklands and also took out the Westinghouse air defence radar on the same island thereby reducing the possible loss of life of our forces to recapture the Falklands. The Vulcan was also used to develop the Concorde engines.

Aside from the purpose of aircraft my point is we had the knowledge and ability in the 1950s ( Vulcan project started in 1948) to design develop and manufacture huge advances in engineering technology ahead of the rest of the world. When the specification went out from the Air Ministry 3 separate individual companies produced, for then, very advanced aircraft today we cannot produce an aircraft
without going in to partnership with other companies. Upgrading one particular RAF aircraft is now being carried out in Poland as we have lost the capability to do it in the UK.

-------------------------
John Peckham

http://www.astutetechnicalservices.co.uk/

Talking of noise...

RAF Gaydon Air Show in the 60's, with four Vulcans doing a mock scramble together, was really impressive.

Shocking indeed RnR - the Welsh, Scots and Irish all played a part in it - not just England - if there's gonna be blame then I guess we all played the game

Sons of Empire, little boy soldiers - you know the drill

Regards

OMS

-------------------------
Failure is always an option

To be a true son you stand toe to toe with your enemy and look them firmly in the eye as you thrust your sword into their chest, thats cricket.

regards

-------------------------
"Take nothing but a picture,
leave nothing but footprints!"
-------------------------
"Oh! The drama of it all."
-------------------------
"You can throw all the philosophy you like at the problem, but at the end of the day it's just basic electrical theory!"
-------------------------

I am afraid I lost interest in the RAF at a very early age and to cap it off I only lasted two weeks when I was 16, one at a hole called Cardington doing aptitude, intelligence and fitness tests and the other at Cranwell getting up at 5 and running 10 miles with bricks in your backpack and ammo pouches before breakfast, if it was after breakfast and my coffee fix perhaps I would not have minded LOL , the rest of the time was spent running around like the demented screaming and firing blanks scaring the birds pretending you were killing people, a rifle with six strings would have suited me better.

regards

-------------------------
"Take nothing but a picture,
leave nothing but footprints!"
-------------------------
"Oh! The drama of it all."
-------------------------
"You can throw all the philosophy you like at the problem, but at the end of the day it's just basic electrical theory!"
-------------------------

Come on guys - it's a fact of life that defence has the biggest budget so has the greatest engineers working for that sector - it's not that we can't replicate what went on before (in terms of engineering excellence) - we just don't need to - the peace dividend ?

Just keep in mind that all of that excellence spills over into other sectors - so society reaps the benefit, it's just not obvious at first look what the link is.

If you want to see engineering excellence in action, look at medical engineering support, limb prosthetics, micro surgery, state of the art electronics, etc - and then consider why

Regards

OMS

-------------------------
Failure is always an option

So what you are really saying is these brilliant defence engineers who create these horrible weapons used around the world supply the brilliant medical engineers with the guinea pigs to practice their medical technology art on.

regards

-------------------------
"Take nothing but a picture,
leave nothing but footprints!"
-------------------------
"Oh! The drama of it all."
-------------------------
"You can throw all the philosophy you like at the problem, but at the end of the day it's just basic electrical theory!"
-------------------------

Not for the Argies it isnt

-------------------------
Regards

Dave(not Cockburn)

Pretty much, yes - defence is a fact of life, and nation states will always want to protect thier "asset" or project thier will elswhere.

In simple terms, one could argue that a nuclear deterrent, for example has kept a significant peace for the last 70 years and provided massive research that spills over into all sorts of non defence sectors.

I don't think there is any doubt that dealing with casualties on the battlefield gives a a huge body of knowledge on how to keep the liquids inside the bag of bones and how to keep it going in spite of potentially massive trauma - and that benefits everyone from the guy whose just had an industrial accident to a little kid knocked down outside the school gates.

Engineers support all of that in every aspect of society - are we saying that we shouldn't make use of technology just because the original purpose was "defense". Let's not forget that it's political will (or actually a failure of diplomacy) that results in "conflict" - engineers don't create that, they just simply respond - broadly in an ethical fashion.

Regards

OMS



Regards

OMS

-------------------------
Failure is always an option