Salute to the V-Force

Last weekend was the final flight for the Vulcan XH558 on a two-day, round-the-country tour - Salute to the V-Force - of the locations where the remaining V-Force airframes & planes are on display in a variety of museums and exhibitions.

At around 3pm last Saturday it flew over Manchester Airport and I captured these few shots from near the Shadowmoss tram stop close to the perimeter of the airport.

Avro Vulcan XH558 was built in 1960 and retired from display flying for the RAF in 1993. In the 1960s, these planes were to carry the UK's nuclear deterrent (had it ever been necessary) until that task fell to the Polaris submariners. They were used for long range conventional bombing missions during the Falklands conflict in 1982, and then retired from active service. This plane was restored to flying between 2005 and 2007 by by the Vulcan to the Sky Trust.

2015 is to be her last flying display season. A variety of factors have led to this situation - XH558 now has more flying hours under her belt than any other Vulcan ever did, so whilst still perfectly airworthy for the foreseeable future, it's now getting harder to know where to look for potential problems; spare parts are increasingly difficult to source, and last but not least, engineers with real, hands-on experience of the aircraft in RAF service are almost all retired or departed this life.

As a result, the Technical Authorities (essentially the three businesses that maintain the aeroplane) have decided not to continue to keep her flying beyond 2015. Under Civil Aviation Authority regulations, she must therefore be evermore grounded.

A contribution to Skywatch Friday.

ABC WednesdayF is for Flamanville

Flying back from Jersey last year we flew with Flybe over Flamanville in France.

Flamanville is a commune in the Manche department in north-western France.

The Flamanville Nuclear Power Plant was established there in the 1980s, with two PWR reactors of 1300 MWe each, which were put into operation in 1986 and 1987.

Flamanville has been selected for the installation of the first French EPR reactor (which will be Flamanville's third reactor) near the two existing ones. This facility was to be operational in 2012 but at the early planning and permission stage objections were raised by the neighbouring States of Jersey and the start date has been put back to 2014.

More information about the town can be found on its website.

Information about the reactor can be gleaned from the Power Technology website.

Another aerial photograph from further North can be found on sithenah.

More F posts can be found on ABC Wednesday.

ABC Wednesday O is for Over the Edge of England

On the 2nd October 2010 we finally flew on Flybe from Manchester to Jersey.

We should have gone in April but our flight was cancelled at the last minute due to the volcanic ash cloud. The airline refunded us less a booking and credit card fee of £12, but our travel insurance failed to pay up for the cancelled holiday.

However the Maison des Landes Hotel moved our booking to October.

I took these two photographs through the plane window. We are somewhere over the South coast of England, possibly near the Isle of Wight.

I'm still working my way through the almost 300 photographs I took that week and will present the best fifty or so on my website in due course.

Meanwhile one taster can be found on my sithenah photoblog.

For more O posts visit ABC Wednesday.