Video: Can You Say Aerodynamic Braking? (Vulcan Bomber Farnborough 2012)

 I'm constantly amazed at how easy it is to miss really cool avgeek stuff on the internet, like this fabulous Vulcan Bomber landing video from Farnborough 2012 that now has over 1,300,000 views. I had missed it til this morning... but maybe you've already seen it. Even if you have tho, it's definitely worth seeing again. This is some serious aerodynamic braking on display!

 The Avro Vulcan served as a bomber in the British RAF from 1956 until 1984. The airplane is nearly square in its dimensions with both a length and wingspan either a little under 100 feet or a little over 100 feet depending on the version. Max takeoff weight for the later version was just a tick over 200,000 pounds and the max cruise speed was .93 Mach. The Vulcan was an outgrowth of the much smaller Avro 707 that was used to test the viability of a the delta wing platform.

 The Vulcan burned itself into my memory back in my teen years when it was touring US airshows back in 1976. It was truly glorious to see and hear this amazing beauty fly. The example in this video, known as Vulcan XH558, is the only flying of the 136 built. It was restored by Vulcan to the Sky Trust thru charitable donations and had been flying on and off since 2008. It's scheduled to attend several European aviation events this summer, including the 2013 RIAT. Long live the Vulcan!

#vulcanlove

Video screenshot showing the massive Vulcan wing being used for braking on landing