Warbird Information Exchange

As it has 'no-showed' on two of the occasions I was hoping to see it last year...I thought I better make a pledge to be on the safe side.

PeterA

Argh, I hope not. If they do, they'll need a significant increase in the one-a-minute birthrate.

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

James, you can absolutely bet the house that the begging bowl for the Vulcan will be brought out again for two very good reasons. Firstly, the Vulcan consumes cash at a rate faster than my wife and unless they find a benefactor with very deep pockets, memberships and subscriptions won't pay the bills. Secondly the strategy appears to have worked this time so there will be a real temptation for them to have another go at it, proving HL Menckens old adage that "no-one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the public".

They'll trot out all the old chesnuts for this fundraiser, heritage, history, education, patriotism; but from cold, hard experience I know that what is really going on here is that the flyboys wish to fly at the expense of the public's hard earned cash and they will probably achieve their goal.

Flying a Vulcan doesn't educate the masses one iota, it doesn't add to the heritage of Great Britain and it adds nothing to the historical record. It just turns fuel into noise at obscene expense.

Personally, I'd rather see the cubic dollars being thrown at something like a flyable Mosquito or Beaufighter project, but best of luck to them.

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Sure, Charles Lindbergh flew the plane... but Tom Rutledge built the engine!

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I think we could all suggest more worthy and lasting projects to put 6M UKP, or $15M AUD or $10M USD into upfront, or 1.8M UKP per annum.

The clock has stopped with a pledge tally of £938,077.

I remain surprised and impressed at the level of pledges received, and assuming the bulk of those are real offers and not phantom bids, the project appears to gets a reprieve and flys on for a little longer.

But its now reported on the KP forum that the annual costs to run are 1.8M UKP per annum (@$4M AUD or @$3M USD), those are mind boggling in themselves and still twice as much as was just raised.

I previously thought the costs were about 600k UKP per annum or @$1.2M AUD / @$800k USD) which seemed enormous on their own, let alone this higher number???

It does raise the question of how much the recent pledge actually "buy's" the donors? and the media and general public will quickly respond if TVOC now maintain the previous habit of regularly calling for more funds "or the Vulcan gets it".

There have been suggestions a management change and improved marketing is required, however with such high operating costs I dont think it is viable even in a booming economy.

The whole proposition of the project still appears questionable, and raises the question of how it got past the HLF in the first place?

Regards

Mark Pilkington

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20th Century - The Age of Manned Flight
"from Wrights to Armstrong in 66 years -WOW!"

I don't think that a change in management or improved marketing is the answer to this problem. Afterall the current management of the Vulcan Project has raised millions of pounds in funding, no mean effort, whether you agree with their tactics or not.

The problem is that this idea should never have gotton of the ground (literally) in the first place. The most cursory of feasibility studies should have shown that the Vulcan was designed to be operated by an organisation with access to vast and recurringly vast sums of money - taxpayers money. No private organisation could possibily hope to match that expenditure, even in the short term.

It happenss often in aviation preservation when something sounds like a good idea and emotion overrides commonsense and financial resources. In the end someone is going to get a very nice static Vulcan and discover that just sitting there it will cost more than most museums can afford.

Give it a year or two , most heavy warbird opperators will be begging for cash too....so what then ..tell Sally B ...nah there's better things to spend money on ? .....What gets grounded next? Hell how about Fifi , what happens if they run short of cash what with the new engines and so on , how would you all feel if everyone said , you know what there's better projects out there ? Sod it theres a B29 in a museum ....
Warbirds are a loss making commodity , the only thing they have left is the history value and as warbird lovers we give up on that well airshows will be a very boring thing to see, just go to the museum instead not too mention we have failed the crews who flew these birds in not so happy times.

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End of the last day countdown and it seems the pledges exceeded 950k UK Pounds as was expected, the Vulcan flys for a while longer (but not yet confirmed for the whole of 2009)?

Congratulations to the entire team, for a surprising result.

However it seems no "Major" corporate sponsor has stepped forward publicly, (despite the publicity, media and public interest that would reward that with far more recognition etc than has been previously available) suggesting that the original corporate sponsorship reliance or expectations will not eventuate, leaving the only ongoing funding resources members monthly subscriptions and public fundraising.

Apparantly the pledges only attracted 10,000 supporters, well below the supposed 30,000 members and friends, putting the average contribution at 100 pounds per head, suggesting that will not be repeatable too often.


The Vulcan is an expensive aircraft to run, if the supporter base cannot be expanded and relied upon to provide sufficient monthly subscriptions the project will be back in this same situation and I suspect will not be as successful the next time round.

This project in my mind was/is the most ambitious aviation heritage project in the world due to the scale of its economics, it is also becoming high profile around the world.

Despite the view it was soaking up HLF funds that might have been better spent elsewhere, it is promoting aviation heritage on a grand scale, and with wide media interest.

However I aso believe its eventual failure with that wide media focus could do significant damage to aviation heritage projects and fundraising world wide in regards to corporate and government support.

I hope the Management come clean with open details of the use of the current fundraising and outlook, improve their performance in attracting and communicating with supporters etc in the future, and develop and invoke a viable business plan.

below is the current VTST announcement over the pledges.

Regards

Mark Pilkington

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20th Century - The Age of Manned Flight
"from Wrights to Armstrong in 66 years -WOW!"

I knew it.. they can only operate for another month? If that is what i read right UNTIL all the donations are actually made.. what if they arent all followed thru as cash sales.. then it FAILS?????

This is indeed truly a stupid exercise..... as pointed out... it wont work every year (7yrs and 3 times this has happened already) and people JUST cant keep donating in time of recessions. That is a fact.

I cut my spending back in last 3 months savagely due to recession coming...

My Mustang project could use $1m of doantion.( cant guanrantee anything beside ground static )

While the project may have been over ambitous and worth serious consideration of its viability and other alternatives for spending the money on BEFORE it commenced, the current situation AFTER spending 6M UK pounds or $14M AUD / $10M USD to get it flying, is that seeking pledges to keep it flying isn't a stupid exercise.

Especially if this time it successfully has raised money, (the UK apparantly averages @80% conversion of pledges to cash, and these pledges are apparantly attracting some type of government subsidy called "gift-aid"??

I personally think some of the money and effort should be put towards its retirement plan, but I suspect that will be yet another "save the Vulcan" appeal.

I dont think a future emergency call for pledges will get the same response.

The issue really is that at 1.8M UK pounds per annum to operate the aircraft it is unlikely to remain commercially viable unless many Major corporate sponsors step in each year, or the enthusiasts interested in seeing it fly commit to regular and reliable membership subscriptions.

There are apparantly @30,000 "supporters" who would need to commit @ 60 pounds per annum or 5 pounds per month, its quite simple, if you want the Vulcan to keep flying, be willing to pay for it.



I think the Vulcan project is a good reality test for those calling for examples of every retiring Jet & military aircraft to tranfer into private warbirds to be undertaken.

(usually those calling for them arnt those who will have to do it or pay for it).

In Australian forums we have had people (including flyingheritage himself) making such calls, and I have seen calls for warbird operations of P3C Orions, F4 Phantoms, F-111's and Mirages, elsewhere have been calls for a Concorde to do the same.

All of these aircraft have far more complex systems and engines than the typical WW2 fighter or bomber, all of them have far more stringent certification issues (wing spar life etc) all of them cost mega dollars simply to fuel per hour.

Flying historic aircraft do have an important role to play in aviation heritage and education, however putting a couple more of the existing static or ground running Vulcans in the UK undercover would have been a far better way to preserve the heritage of the type for future generations, and more lasting return on the investment.

The reality is this Flying Vulcan project was only ever intending a 10 year flying program and after that the pre 2008 situation would return of "current generations and school children" only seeing one on the ground or in historical film. The reality is thats how many types are, and will be preserved.

regards

Mark Pilkington

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20th Century - The Age of Manned Flight
"from Wrights to Armstrong in 66 years -WOW!"

I suppose we cant try to get some public donations to get a B-36 flying on a 10 year plan?

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Shop the Airplane Bunker At
www.warbirdbunker.com

IMHO, I'm not impressed. Seems to me they're taking the wrong tactics and looking for funds from the wrong people. My bet is a lot of those that donated can't be just doing that every single year, or every few months. If they can't get their act together for funding, then it was ill conceived to begin with. Just my 2 cents.

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F-84F Simulator Project
www.f-84f.org

Go for it Nathan, but please dont compete with my "Fly a Shuttle" project, I have to raise $40M just to get one off NASA when they retire them, before I can then announce the intention to raise @$50M per year to fly it on the airshow circuit. (Perhaps I can interest Branson in a joint venture?? for space tourism and "adventure flights" - "Virgin Shuttle"??)

Smerks

Mark Pilkington

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20th Century - The Age of Manned Flight
"from Wrights to Armstrong in 66 years -WOW!"

It's great they got it flying but in this economy the whole thing is obscene.