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XH558: the deadline has been set – the end of February.

XH558 Survival Appeal Update (3rd February 2010)
 
Dear Supporter,
 
XH558: the deadline has been set – the end of February.
 
Sadness and grim determination are the main emotions today: the Trust’s funds are such that the decision has now been taken to place all its employees on one month’s notice, as of 1st February.
 
We have so much to fight for, but with less than one month to avoid shutdown, the pressure is now really on.
 
On the few occasions when we have been in a similar position before, all XH558’s most loyal supporters have rallied to the cause, and somehow she has been saved. We are not assuming that the same will happen this time, which is why we are enlisting so many more people to help.
 
In 1941, Sir Winston Churchill said: “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never, in nothing, great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.” We are not giving in.
 
Mindful that we should not solicit donations whilst we are uncertain about XH558’s future, we are putting 100% of our efforts into the Survival Appeal Pledge Scheme.
 
We need to raise over £300,000 in new pledges by the end of February to justify a stay of execution, followed by a further £300,000 in March to reach our target of £800,000.
 
We are therefore launching a number of new activities to secure the immediate future:
 
·        An attempt to set a WORLD RECORD for the number of signatures on a single birthday card for XH558.
·        Re-design of the Appeal website to ensure visitors understand our urgent message, with a countdown timer to our deadline of 28th February..
·        A sixty-second no-punches-pulled promotional VIDEO, spread via emails, with the goal of going “viral” with our message.
·        A written notice and Pledge reply slip to all those on our databases.
·        A SURVIVAL RAFFLE, launched by the Vulcan to the Sky Club, to create instant availability of working capital, once we are secured. (Prizes will be honoured by the Club if the worst happens).
·        A PROMOTION PACK, distributed with the Club’s Winter magazine, to all club members.
·        Targeted ADVERTISING in regional newspapers where affordable.
·        Contact with national media and PR agencies to get XH558’s story in front of as many people as possible.
·        And of course networking with all existing supporters, sponsors and industry leaders.
 
If we gather sufficient momentum over the next four weeks, we may well be able to start work on XH558 once again, but we will only do this if we are confident that the target will be met.
 
In the meantime, work continues at Marshall Aerospace on the detailed planning for the Winter Engineering Programme, whilst our own team are helping with the Appeal.
 
Assuming we are successful, with the new experienced gained over the past year, we will be building funds throughout the year in all ways possible to avoid the desperate measures we have had to take each winter to keep the dream alive.
 
Remember our ultimate goal: to be flying down the Mall on 4th June 2012 in celebration of Her Majesty the Queen’s – and the Vulcan’s – Diamond Jubilee.
 
As we count down the days of February, all the thousands of our loyal supporters know full well what they will be missing if the worst comes to the worst for XH558. What is most galling, is that there are millions of people who really don’t know what they will have missed. But if they did, they could well decide to help save her.
 
XH558 is the “People’s Aircraft”. Can the people save her again?
 
Robert Pleming

XH558’s Future Now at Risk.

I imagine that you were as pleased as I was to see the excellent coverage that XH558 and her 50th Birthday Appeal gained in the Mail on Sunday on 17th January. We all need to thank those responsible for making this happen: the supporters who wrote letters to the Mail on Sunday Editor, asking him to publicise our campaign. But the situation remains dire.

The Extent of the Problem

Having already funded Marshall Aerospace to commence the most urgent “critical path” tasks needed for the Winter Engineering Programme, we now have just sufficient funds in our bank account to pay our overhead costs from today until the end of February – slightly less than five weeks. As the result, at the end of this week, I may need to recommend to the Board of Trustees that we give one month’s notice to all VTST employees with effect from 1st February.

The implications for XH558 are extremely grave: if we don’t find the money to keep going and finish the engineering programme, we may well lose all control over her destiny. We have already launched the plea for funds in a national newspaper, unfortunately apparently to little effect. We have raised just over £180,000, but we still need a total of £800,000 to get XH558 to the 2010 display season.

Because of the amount of work needed to be done this Winter, and the lead time associated with some of the items, there is real urgency in raising the sum needed – a further £620,000. As is the nature of engineering work on aircraft, not only is it surprisingly expensive but it’s “all or nothing”, which is why we now should not proceed further until we have confidence of reaching the full amount.

Including the necessary test flight, the whole engineering programme should last no longer than four months. But the longer we have to wait before reaching our £800,000 target, the more we delay XH558’s appearance her 50th Birthday air display season, and the more funds we would have used on unproductive overheads.

For XH558, the only way is forward through to completion of the whole engineering programme.

If there’s one positive thing we can say, it is that, barring mishaps, this is by far the most expensive Winter Service that XH558 will have to undergo for the foreseeable future. It will put in place the fatigue life extension modifications necessary for the remainder of her flying life.

Action Plan

So where to from here?

First, and most important, we are not giving up. We have to turn XH558’s 50th Birthday Appeal into nothing less than her 2010 Survival Appeal.

Recognising that supporters do not want to risk any of their donations not achieving tangible success, we are re-launching and re-driving our Pledge scheme.

Shortly, our website pages will change to reflect the new Appeal. We will be launching a Vulcan viral video, containing an attempt at a new world record, which we hope, with your help, will capture the attention of many.

The nature of the tasks and lead times of the Winter Engineering Programme means that it may be possible to move forward having raised only part of the funds, as long as there is confidence that the remaining funds will be forthcoming.

So when new pledges reach the half-way point of £310,000 (a total raised of £490,000), we will review the progress of the Appeal. If we are confident the whole amount will be raised, we will call in the pledges to date to allow work on XH558 to continue.

To set a deadline, we need to see £310,000 in new pledges by the end of February at the latest, if we are not to miss the main airshows this summer

As part of this new Campaign, I would like to offer an incentive: those who honour a pledge of £1,000 or more will receive an invitation for a personal visit to XH558 at RAF Lyneham during the Winter Service, to see her close-up and talk to the engineers who are working on her.

Please now would you help XH558 by making a Pledge if you can, but just as importantly, by spreading the word about this revised and renewed Pledge Campaign?

http://www.site.vulcantothesky.org/pledge.asp

We will continue to publicise XH558’s current plight and your help in doing this is so very valuable. So far we have not been successful in gaining the attention of very many of the 2.5million who saw her last summer – we need to radically improve this performance.

Assuming that we are successful in returning XH558 to flight, we have decided that we need to run a funding campaign spanning the whole year, aimed at avoiding getting in to a similar situation again. This Annual campaign will be launched formally on XH558’s Birthday, 25th May, and will run from this date every year. We are also closely examining our costs again, in order to reach a sustainable balance of income and expenditure in coming years.

These are desperate times and we recognise that with the shocking disaster in Haiti lest week, this is not a good time to prevail upon anyone’s generosity. However, from the above I hope you will understand that for XH558 it is now or never. We have no choice but to come back to you.

Very many thanks for any assistance you may be able to give.

Robert Pleming

Appeal Update 16th Dec:

16 December 2009 - Robert Pleming

The latest Appeal results show that the 50th Birthday Appeal has raised just over £150,000. At this time of year, in the current economic climate, this is a positively encouraging uptake. Everyone is most grateful for this on-going support.
 
Right now however, we are still well short of having enough cash to commit the essential engineering activities for 2010, with cash donations standing at just over £100,000. We really need to double this in less than a month!
 
After that, we still have a long way to go before the project is secure. We must keep driving the Appeal to realise well over £200,000 in cash by the first week in January, then £200,000 for each of the following 3 months.
 
Please take a few minutes to think of any friends, relatives or colleagues who might be persuaded to make a donation or a pledge!
 
The mathematics says that even a small direct donation but from a large number of people can make a huge difference! To this end, we have placed adverts in a number of regional publications, and are also looking into the cost implications of taking these adverts to a National level early in the New Year.
 
On pledges, the “Signup” page now allows you to specify a redemption month that suits you. If you have already pledged or donated, then please consider another pledge but timed in March towards the end of our Appeal.
 
Please continue to do all you can to promote XH558’s cause, as indeed every person – employee or volunteer - involved with the Trust is doing on XH558’s behalf. We have come too far not to try every possible means available to us.
 
Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary, announced yesterday a savage reprioritisation in the RAF’s budgets, with amongst other cuts RAF Cottesmore – an old Vulcan base – to close. I now believe that XH558 has a third role, in addition to “Honouring the Past and Inspiring the Future”. With the inevitable cuts in the RAF’s air display commitments, XH558 is now one of the few ways that the public come to see the importance of Air Power in the defence of our country – a role that senior RAF officers fully endorse.
 
My next update will be just before Christmas and will be the last before the New Year – and decision time.
 
Kind Regards,
 
 
Robert Pleming
Chief Executive

50th Birthday Appeal - Update 1 of 4 - Friday 13th November.

Appeal Funding Crisis - Urgent

Our 50th Birthday Appeal to our loyal supporters and the millions who saw us fly this summer was for cash for two key reasons:

·        To bolster our depleted reserves, now down to critical levels, to cover daily costs such as rent, wages, insurance;

·        To commission and begin work on the Winter Service and life extension modifications to ensure we can deliver the 2010 Birthday Season.

From the small size of the mailbags arriving at Bruntingthorpe, it appears that XH558’s 50th Birthday Appeal has been badly affected by the various postal delays – we are significantly behind where we need to be to reach our £400,000 target by Christmas.

So far, we have received less than £30,000 in donations from 800 donors, from a mailing that went out to 35,000 people. This is a far lower response rate than ever previously experienced.

The total so far amounts to less than 10% of what we need before Christmas! Not only will we not be able to begin the time-critical engineering work, we are looking at the serious prospect of having to shut down the operation. This is now a serious and imminent threat.

With the major proportion of our known and planned funding of £1.6million coming in during the air show season, we have to rely on the Appeal to survive through the winter months

With the desperately slow progress we are currently making, we are finding it more and more difficult to cover our monthly base costs, let alone commit to the work that we need to have done to make it to the 2009 season.

I have to admit that I am now much more nervous about XH558’s future; it seems that unless we can mobilise significantly more support, the day of reckoning may not be far away.

This would be devastating to all those who have fought long and hard over the years to realise the dream. Our goal is so small in comparison to other funding needs, so we must try every avenue in which to succeed.

Our strategy remains to reach out to all those who saw XH558 last year, especially the huge numbers – 1.5 million – that attended the “free” airshows, and ask for their help in supporting XH558, whilst also trying to attract fresh support from others yet to be touched by “The Vulcan Effect”!

We need your help with this effort – which is why we have chosen to call the 50th Birthday Appeal a “staged appeal”.

We need you to act as the secondary stage of our campaign! We have released the primary – the 50th Birthday Appeal itself. We now need you to multiply the effectiveness of the Appeal many-fold in a chain-reaction, by taking the Appeal out to everywhere and anywhere.

Contact your local newspapers and radio stations, put up the posters, post on your blogs, email your friends and colleagues, link back to us from Websites you run – all will be valuable in taking out our message.

Please let us know if you have any questions or comments, if you run into problems or have new ideas, or if you need posters and leaflets: give the office a call on 0116 247 8145.

We continue to work on leads and contacts in the hope of getting some widespread National coverage soon that will make the difference – it is hoped we can achieve this before it is too late.

My wife Suzanne and I were in London last Sunday for the Remembrance Day commemorations at the Cenotaph. It was a truly emotional experience, and a huge reminder of how much we all owe those who have served, and are serving, in our Armed Services.

It was also a strong reminder of XH558’s role in “Honouring the Past”, in particular those thousands of service personnel who supported the RAF’s “V-Force” in its strategic deterrent capacity in the 1950’s and 1960’s. In John Milton’s words, “they also serve who only stand and wait”: never more true than in the case of the V-Force personnel who were on standby for so many years. We must keep XH558 flying to ensure that this message is not forgotten.

Kind regards

Robert Pleming

Chief Executive

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Winter Engineering Plan: Aircraft Life Extension Update 2 of 4  - 13th November 2009
 
 
Following recent planning work for the Winter Engineering programme, I thought that you would appreciate a glimpse of some of what is going to happen, and the timescale constraints that result.
 
Probably the most significant project is the embodiment of the wing fatigue life extension modification on the bottom of the front spar on each wing.
 
The Avro Vulcan is a “safe life” aircraft, where the airframe strength has been verified on a fatigue life specimen airframe, which in the case of the Vulcan went through 41,000 cycles – simulated flights – in the 1960s.
 
As the result of the fatigue test, the Vulcan was granted an ultimate life of 320 fatigue index units. However during the test, various weaknesses and defects were discovered over time that resulted in repairs – these repairs turned into fatigue life extension modifications for the Vulcan fleet.
 
A good example is the strengthening added to the rear spar during the restoration to flight in 2007 – Modification 2222.
 
We have always known that further fatigue life extension modifications will be required to ensure that XH558 can continue flying. However the next stages of life extension have to be added earlier than we had expected.
 
Whilst XH558 enjoyed an extremely successful summer season, we have consumed rather more fatigue life than planned, owing to the bumpy conditions experienced in transit at low level. (We are currently not permitted to transit through cloud to smooth air above.) We have now used up about 250 fatigue units, against a current clear limit of 252 units, giving us only 10-20 flying hours until the next modifications are due, including the strengthening of the bottom of the front spar.
 
We have therefore decided to bring these modifications forward from Winter 2010-11 to this winter.
 
A further important complication arises due to the fact that XH558 is now the “fleet leader” – no other Vulcan has flown for as many hours, or consumed as much fatigue life. The practical consequence of this is that the front spar strengthening modification, whilst embodied on the fatigue test specimen, was never added to a Vulcan from the RAF’s fleet.
 
The modification is simple in principle: the replacement of the set of plates at the front of the undercarriage bay, by a larger set of plates. Pictures will be on our web site soon showing examples of this type of work.
 
To achieve this, a set of drawings needs to be produced from the available data, and a process for removing the existing plates and adding the new ones must be created. This all takes time, and must be scheduled in to the already extremely busy design office at Marshal Aerospace. After that, the materials and fasteners have to be ordered – do we have a lead time problem? – and finally the modification added to XH558.
 
The uncertainties on timescale mean that if we are to deliver a full display season in 2010, we need to commit the design activity now, and that means paying over £100,000 up front.
 
If we don’t proceed now, it becomes more and more likely that we would be limited to the 10-20 flying hours currently available, which would give us precious few hours in front of the public after test, currency and display authorisation flights.
 
There are other, easier engineering activities which we must carry out this winter, but their additional costs all go towards the target that the 50th Birthday Appeal is planned to achieve.
 
We know we can fly XH558 safely on for quite some time, but as we enter unexplored territory, we have to do things properly, and there are costs that result.
 
This is why were urgently need your help with the 50th Birthday Appeal; the implications of not making our funding target of £400,000 by Christmas are very worrying.
 
With best wishes
 
Robert Pleming
Chief Executive

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50th Birthday Appeal Update Friday 30th October.

It is now two weeks since we launched our Appeal. Unfortunately, due to the current postal strikes, it appears that only a fraction of our list of supporters have received XH558’s 50th Birthday Appeal mailing, and so are not fully aware of the current situation. Hopefully, given another week or so, everyone on the database will have received the information pack.

As it will be a few more days before we have active income figures available on the Appeal website, I can tell you that so far we have received slightly less than £20,000 in direct donations, together with increases in monthly Standing Order commitments of £400.

Given our target is to raise a minimum of £400,000 before Christmas, we now need to average £50,000 per week; I’m sure you agree that we have some catching up to do over the next few weeks. We need to have these funds in place to ensure we can commit to the engineering work that needs to be done by outside companies in time to meet our Engineering Timetable for 2010. This is why it is so important we ask everyone to do whatever they can NOW.

Having said all that, we all realise that we can not keep asking the same staunch and loyal supporters to keep putting in more than they can afford. So it is vital that we reach out to new supporters and other audiences. I’ve previously mentioned that just a fraction of those touched by XH558 this year helped to finance her – it is exactly those people we must aim to bring on board.

For those who have received their Appeal mailing, especially those who live in the vicinity of one of the airshows visited by XH558 this year, why don’t you do what I did last week, and visit your local newsagent. My newsagent was more than happy to agree to my request to place the poster from the Appeal in his window for all to see – he is after all a Vulcan supporter!

Just this morning there was a good five minute feature on Vulcan and Vulcan Ventures on Radio Northamptonshire. This free yet wide coverage is exactly what will help us.

Next week, we have regional adverts in selected papers and magazines, while campaign leaflets will be distributed for us by other organisations friendly towards XH558, to reach their own audiences. If you are confident that you know an organisation who would be happy to distribute our campaign leaflets, please contact Ian Homer on 07791 617776.

We are also mounting a significant presence at the “MPH Top Gear Live” show at Earls Court next week 5th – 8th November. Please come and find us if you are in the area between Thursday and Sunday on Stand TS49. We are planning to capture a key member of the Top Gear Team to come over and talk to us!

If you are reading this on our website, let me remind you that you can subscribe to our email updates, which means that you will automatically receive these messages when they are published. Please visit: http://www.site.vulcantothesky.org/newsletter.asp

Finally, please continue to do whatever you can to help promote our cause, and hopefully, we will see a marked improvement in income next week.

Kind Regards,

Robert Pleming

Chief Executive

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