I was lucky to be on the flight path for the Cold War Tour of Vulcan XH558 today.

It really is an impressive machine - we should do all we can to maintain this unique and amazing aircraft

If you want to help keep it flying, you had best raise an AWFUL, AWFUL lot of money, VERY, VERY quickly! !

As I understand it, the remaining engines are approaching the end of their life-spans, and NO replacements exist.

The air-frame of the plane is also VERY time limited.

From what I have learnt, you will be very lucky to see XH558 fly after this year, so if you get a chance to see her in flight just go and enjoy it. You will feel it, as much as see it !

Awesome !

I think I saw that flying over Leeds last week. Is it possible? It was an enormous delta flying quite slow.

It flew directly over where I work in Cambridge yesterday. We thought it was coming through. Rushed to the window and could see it flying away

If you want to see her flay again she needs support now. Go to XH558 to find out how you can help fund this years displays and pledge support for the winter service.

I have supported her since the late 90's, been and seen her when they rebuilt her and seen her at least once a year in the sky since she got back in the air. Its an amazing plane, British designed and built. We will never see her like again

Unfortunately, as has been pointed out by a previous post, she has limited engine life. The tools to refurbish/ build new engines were scrapped many years ago as nobody needed them at the time. Rolls Royce have helped as much as they can, indeed to get a CAA permit to fly they had to agree as the OEM of the engines that they were 'good to go', but they can not make engines appear from thin air. With enough money to pay for one more winter service and the remainder of this years costs then the engines have enough life for one more year, after that she will only be able to 'fast taxi'.

She is the last flying Vulcan EVER...... no other Vulcan will ever be permitted to fly as none have been looked after like she has.

Please please please click here and make a donation if you want to see her take to the sky for one last year

Being an active supporter of XH558, It fills me with sadness that this will probably be the last year we see her fly.

The engines are coming to there life limit, and sadly the last remaining engines were damaged earlier this year when they ingested a few bags of silica gel. As said before, the remaining engines are due OH and RR will not support them as the tooling has long been scrapped. The costs to have the tooling made again and overhaul carried out outweighs the money coming in. I really hope something comes of it because it really is great to see her flying.

Being based at farnborough airport has its benefits, See attached videos of her at Farnborough Airshow this year:

fab6

Fab1

And Two Vids:

Vulcan Flare

Vulcan Flyby

And a few for anyone who loves the "Reds" poor video from me, but there hard to film at 100ft!!

fab2

fab4

fab5

Reds Over FAB

John

heres one of my pictures from a while back. i have some fresh ones from this years duxford along with some video if people are interested in me uploading it.




[Edited on 26/9/2014 by ashg]

Ive found pics from 2010, its first year back in service IIRC:









And a few of something quite unique, I think this was the only UK display it ever did:

This has just reminded me to make a pledge for the winter service.....actually made 6 pledges! One for me, one for the Mrs and one each for my kids! Its expensive supporting these things but for just one more year it has to be worth it