This is still being based on a photo of a shiny undercarriage leg though! Ultimately there are very few on here (and I'm not one of them) who really know the mechanical condition of these jets. All this talk of the BOAC days, yet the RAF successfully flew '241 for 20 years afterwards...vc10boy wrote:lets have a vote [just for fun of-course] maybe jelle could organise it on this website on the opening page,votes open for say a week?,one vote for each signed up contributer on which vc10 we think should be saved,it might well mean nothing wotever we think,..but would be fun to know wot this site thinks as a whole,then its not just one person saying,i know best ect ect
i flew on alot of BOAC standards ,mainly kano to heathrow via rome often,flew also on nigeria airways and bua,i hold no misplaced loyalty to the aircraft i flew on,i just want the strongest and best airfame for long term preservation thats available,who knows what might happen to it in 10-20 years time
k2,s where very worn aircraft as boac and ba worked them very very hard,the undercariges took a heavy beating on the rough runways of the old empire routs,the supers where worked hard aswell,the fleet had an average of 54,000 hours in 1980 when they retired,i used to have all the hours each BA supers had flown by 1980.. when they wanted to fly them out of Abingdon the early 90,s they where all in a sorry state indeed,the keel area needed alot of complex fabrication work re new plates with the amount of corrosion that had taken a hold of the vital keel box section area.,most of them couldnt be saved,they stank inside aswell of damp in the cabin
wotever its futue i still think the best in terms of hours flown,service history ect should all be taken into account,if you knew the history of 2 classic cars,one had always been looked after and had had an easy life..and one sat in a ditch Unattended for ten years,then had had the floor welded up ,which would you tend to go for? [no matter what you intended to do with it?/,anyway lets fix up a vote to see what people think on this site?...democracy in action so to speak.
all jets have a design airframe life,presurised cabins,metal fatgue,lanings take off,s ect,yes the vc10 has one aswell..
In years to come people would be questioning why so many of the K3s were preserved, but the chance to save 3 of the 4 marks of VC-10 was passed by. All of the surviving airframes are good enough to be saved with the requisite maintenance regime. The Brunty boys know what they're doing.
. It also seems inconceivable that the sole surviving C.1 won't be preserved intact.
:(:(