NBD: ****** ******* ** (AKA Status Buzzard B2)

[Shaggy]

17 hours ago, Beedster said:

We saw the final flight of the Vulcan a few years back. Several thousand people rammed onto a cold beach in north Kent. People were tracking the flight on their phones, and it suddenly went quiet. Everyone looked left to see an ominous - almost buzzard like - shape baking over the Thames estuary.

 

It flew towards us and banked left showing the crowd the awesome silhouette/profile (and bomb doors). The entire crowd was silent, still, and tense until it had flown another 20 second or so, allowing us to experience the blast of the engines. At that moment, no joke or exaggeration, several thousand people were struggling to hold it together, there were Dad's trying to pretend not to cry to their kids, kids screaming with excitement at each other, and a few older folks for whom this was the end of an era proudly letting the tears fall. It was a pretty unexpected and powerful moment.

 

You can even see the Vulcan/Buzzard similarity....

 

 

 

Incidentally, a great place to see one of the old Vulcan bombers (amongst many other old beauties) is the Imperial War Air Museum at Duxford, near Cambridge.   No longer flying I think, sadly, but the sheer size of these beasties up close, and their sleekly functional if rather menacing beauty, is amazing. 

[Cosmo Valdemar]

39 minutes ago, Shaggy said:

 

Incidentally, a great place to see one of the old Vulcan bombers (amongst many other old beauties) is the Imperial War Air Museum at Duxford, near Cambridge.   No longer flying I think, sadly, but the sheer size of these beasties up close, and their sleekly functional if rather menacing beauty, is amazing. 

There's one at the RAF Museum in Hendon too - we saw it a couple of weeks ago.

I don't know who these people are but they're standing underneath it, which gives you some idea of the vast size of the thing.

[Beedster]

24 minutes ago, Cosmo Valdemar said:

There's one at the RAF Museum in Hendon too - we saw it a couple of weeks ago.

I don't know who these people are but they're standing underneath it, which gives you some idea of the vast size of the thing.

 

Yep, they were designed to intimidate as much as to operate. It works. When we saw the final flight, the image that came to mind as I watched it bank towards the shoreline was of the battle dragons in the Lord of the Rings movies, it really is a very ominous shape in flight, and provokes some fairly primeval emotions 🦅

[pete.young]

3 hours ago, Shaggy said:

 

Incidentally, a great place to see one of the old Vulcan bombers (amongst many other old beauties) is the Imperial War Air Museum at Duxford, near Cambridge.   No longer flying I think, sadly, but the sheer size of these beasties up close, and their sleekly functional if rather menacing beauty, is amazing. 

At Cosford, they have a Vulcan, a Victor and a Valiant.

[Shaggy]

1 hour ago, pete.young said:

At Cosford, they have a Vulcan, a Victor and a Valiant.

 

I'll have to check that out!   Can't remember exactly what they have at IWM Duxtord; used to be there frequently whenever I visited my folks in Cambridge as my youngest was nuts about the place.  Best known for their WW2 aircraft still in flying condition (mainly Spitfires).   I think the 2 planes they have that impressed me the most were the US "Blackbird" high altitude stealth bomber - it looks created by some alien technology - and the BAC TSR-2 fighter / bomber - a UK project developed in the 1960's but shelved by the British government when the plane was pretty much fully developed.   Generally regarded as "the best plane the RAF never had" and even today looks cleanly graceful and futuristic.

 

(edit: apologies for derailing the thread, Chris.  And  I'm sure your bass was not created by an alien technology.  well fairly sure.....)

 

Edited 7 hours ago by Shaggy

[Cosmo Valdemar]

4 hours ago, pete.young said:

At Cosford, they have a Vulcan, a Victor and a Valiant.

I need to see those! They had the front end of a Victor at Hendon, but only that. The Victor's my favourite of the three