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The Refurbishment of Vulcan XM603
Scaffolding
It’s not easy preparing and painting a Vulcan in the open in the North West of England. After an incredibly generous donation that totally covered the cost, a scaffolding cover was ordered. By the end of April It was up.
The basic design item is that the aircraft should be able to be worked on with no risk of falling very far at all. Walkways all the way round the wing edges & round the fin can be seen being installed.
Meanwhile the Museum trawled the various social media sites for volunteers to help. Unsurprisingly we were almost overwhelmed by the offers of help.
Wrapping
Once the scaffolding was up & had been safety checked the next task was to shrink wrap the whole thing.
How To Shrink Wrap A Vulcan video
June 1st – A kick off meeting is held to plan the way forward.
Members and volunteers plan for the task ahead
A few weeks on
Work progresses well. The top is well on the way to being sanded and new metal is being inserted where needed.
Top coat
After several weeks hard sanding, priming, filling the upper surface gloss coat has been applied over the weekend.
The port intake with a fresh topcoat of gloss paint
Work has now begun on the bottom half the aircraft which is great and thank you to every one on the Vulcan restoration team for their hard work thus far!
Thank you also to Mr Leon Howard, former Avro Woodford apprentice and his company, WarmCo properties as always!!
As someone said on Facebook, the rivetting in the air intake is a work of art. You may notice that there is no No. 2 engine. Two of XM603s engines were removed for use in XM655 at Wellesbourne (one is in use and the other held in spares). XM655 still performs taxi runs.
The upper surfaces painted with the gloss topcoat
October Update
The photo below shows the current state of the refurb. The higher scaffolding has been removed so that the parts of the wing covered by the sections that had to rest on the aircraft (visible above) could be refurbished. These bits have now been painted. Anyone who has been up close to a Vulcan will remember the many different small decals/labels. With the help of Air Livery at Norwich these have now been applied and sealed on. The larger roundels were painted.
The area under XM603 is still being cleared but she will be fully visible to Public visitors on Friday 28th October.
A little taster video with extra footage from the normally inaccessible flightdeck of 603.
Almost ready for the grand unveiling!