Events : Goodwood Festival of Speed gallery – Part 2

Keith Adams

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Well, that’s another Goodwood Festival of Speed over with, and what an amazing event it was. With so much going on, it’s difficult to work out where to begin when it comes to commenting on what is now regarded as the best British motor show, with a bit of historic interest thrown in for good measure.

Of course, we’re being tongue-in-cheek there. The Festival once again attracted an amazing line-up of priceless historics, one-offs and amazing competition cars and it’s probably fair to say that nowhere else on the planet would you be able to see such a line-up – especially at such close quarters in the pit garages and then in action on the hill-climb course.

Until next year’s bandwagon rolls into town, here’s another gallery.

 

Best of British at the Festival

Keith Adams

9 Comments

  1. Hi Keith, is the Vulcan in the pic the XH558-cos read somewhere that this must be one of his last flight, cos of engine spares shortage- and as i know that is the last airworthy AVRO Vulcan existing……hope they get spares for keeping the beast flying
    Simon

  2. It is indeed XH558.

    Originally this was to be the last year due to super-expensive wing repairs being needed. They have found an engineering way around that but in the meantime a cock-up did some engine damage.

    You’re right; although the wings can be repaired, one more damaged angine and it’s all over. There are no more spare flyable engines and few certified spares left. And no-one makes parts any more!

    If you want to keep it flying for as long as possible, bung ’em a few quid. Website found by Googling Vulcan to the Sky.

    SO impressive to see!

  3. I checked a bit and im a bit surprised about the shortage of spares…Being the (Bristol)RR Oylmpus also the engine of the concorde and later the Olympus engines were upgraded and also licensed in the usa, i think that is no the end of the road for the V bombers…..and there are two more taxable but not flying so…… keep them flying

  4. Sadly, the Olympus 593 in the Concorde is quite different from that in the Vulcan – it has afterburning for a start, and re-engineing and aeroplane is not like stuffing a Honda engine in your Mini

  5. thought that they share a certain nuber of components for start just to keep spare park alive-like it was written that no new spares are produced…..so being the concorde grounded later than the Vulcan we can suppose that there is some stocks somewhere, than think they use the olympus 200 series engines but the V bombers used also the 300 series so they can fit and was used also on the Vulcans…
    Never tought of dooing such an oltrageous upgrade like putting a Honda engine in any mini….but in any case is not just a welding procedure , but have to be dooing a serious engeneering work not just put it ion and see if it blow sooner or later

  6. Having spoken to one of the technicians who works on XH558, the biggest hurdle is not necessarily sourcing alternatives to parts, but getting them type-approved. As it’s effectively a large jet, it has to go through pretty much the same approvals process (for safety and regulatory reasons) as say, an A320. This is expensive. Understandably, for something that big, fast and full of jet fuel, there isn’t an equivalent to IVA.

  7. Simon : I am afraid that large jet engines are not dealt with in the same way as car engines . You cannot just pick and mix parts from different engines even though they may be variants of the same basic design . This is one of the reasons why once the aeroplanes are out of service, the engine manufacturers no longer support the type certificate, because to do so would be unreasonably expensive for them. There are sometimes niche providers who hold the necessary approval and will give this sort of service – amazingly, the RR Merlins on the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight are overhauled in Holland , but since the only demand for flying as opposed to ground based Olympus engines now comes from 558 I doubt that there is anyone who will do it

  8. I should also say that you can blame Europe for this – before EASA the CAA were often able to be persuaded to grant one-off approvals

  9. If anything can describe british engineering without words its got to be a Avro Vulcan, the size of a bomber,looks like a bomber handles like a fighter plane.

    Simply nothing on earth comes close to this beautiful machine.

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