Nimrod MRA.4 first flight & 'graveyard' footage

[Weaver]

Nimrod MRA.4 first flight...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE5IWSTJHvA

[Captain Canada]

Yup. Miss that bird, but so glad to have been able to see her. One of my favourite times was one blasting over Granny's house on 6 MacDonald Rd. in Stornoway. She was doing an overshoot of the airport and it was a foggy day. What an epic sight and sound !

[PR19_Kit]

One of my BAe buddies in that vid at 0:42! It's so long ago I can't remember his name though. 

That's a great vid, but all the way through it I kept thinking about how much of OUR money had gone into the project, and for which we got precisely NOTHING in return. 

And then they go and buy BOEING P-8s, which won't do as good a job as the Nimrods would have done!!! 

[JayBee]

With Woodford's runway not being long enough, the MR4 used to fly up to Prestwick (with it's very long runway) to take on enough fuel to do the deep water trials WAY out into the N. Atlantic.
I saw it several times, once right over the house at circuit height.
No photos, sorry.

[rickshaw]

The Nimrod MR4 was always going to be marginal as a project from the moment it was concieved.   The numbers weren't worth the justification for the amount of money which was going to be spent on it.  If they could have gotten say, Australia or Canada or a NATO partner to buy some new build ones as well, it might have been worthwhile.   No matter how great the achievement, the economics just didn't back the plan.   The P-8 might be marginal on some of the missions that the Nimrod could fulfill easily, but it was ultimately a cheaper option.  What BAE needed was a cheaper aircraft perhaps an Airbus instead of rehashing such a small number of Nimrods.   

Anyway, real world aside, does anybody make a 1/72 scale conversion for the Airfix Nimrod to convert it into an MR.4 version?   I would assume it would have primarily been new engines, and perhaps wings and any odd bumps and lumps.

[PR19_Kit]

Or it needed the MoD to order more of them, instead of the handful that they were considering?

Plus there's the issue of spending our money abroad, which costs in itself, and the added cost of losing all that aeronautical experience by closing the whole Woodford facility, including our own Weaver..........

[Hobbes]

The Nimrod MR4 was always going to be marginal as a project from the moment it was concieved.   The numbers weren't worth the justification for the amount of money which was going to be spent on it.  If they could have gotten say, Australia or Canada or a NATO partner to buy some new build ones as well, it might have been worthwhile.   No matter how great the achievement, the economics just didn't back the plan.   The P-8 might be marginal on some of the missions that the Nimrod could fulfill easily, but it was ultimately a cheaper option.  What BAE needed was a cheaper aircraft perhaps an Airbus instead of rehashing such a small number of Nimrods.   

Anyway, real world aside, does anybody make a 1/72 scale conversion for the Airfix Nimrod to convert it into an MR.4 version?   I would assume it would have primarily been new engines, and perhaps wings and any odd bumps and lumps.

It'd need new wings. The MRA4 wing is considerable longer than the MR2 wing.

I've got an 1/144 scale MRA4 in the stash, which just uses the MR2 wing with new engines spliced in. I'm planning a visit to Avro Heritage to see if they have information on the MRA4. 

[Weaver]

The Nimrod MR4 was always going to be marginal as a project from the moment it was concieved.   The numbers weren't worth the justification for the amount of money which was going to be spent on it.  If they could have gotten say, Australia or Canada or a NATO partner to buy some new build ones as well, it might have been worthwhile.   No matter how great the achievement, the economics just didn't back the plan.   The P-8 might be marginal on some of the missions that the Nimrod could fulfill easily, but it was ultimately a cheaper option.  What BAE needed was a cheaper aircraft perhaps an Airbus instead of rehashing such a small number of Nimrods.   

Anyway, real world aside, does anybody make a 1/72 scale conversion for the Airfix Nimrod to convert it into an MR.4 version?   I would assume it would have primarily been new engines, and perhaps wings and any odd bumps and lumps.

The original number planned was 24 and the projected cost was much lower, which is why it got the go-ahead. As the costs and delays went up, the numbers went down to compensate. I've always said, since long-before I got a job at Woodford, that the project sholud never have been started, but one it was allowed to get as far as it did, it should have been finished in order to get SOME return from the investment. As it was, the entire amount of money and effort went down the tubes, and that has to include the price of buying something else to replace it too.

The entire wing was new and different in subtle detail, not just the engines. For a conversion, you'd pretty much need a whole new wing to do it justice.

[kitnut617]

What I find interesting from reading the recent books about the Brit AEWs is at the beginning the Air Staff were saying the Nimrod was too big with a lot of empty space, so they wanted something smaller, like Andovers or BAe 146s etc. Then at the end of the Nimrod the excuse was, there's no room for development, too small ---

[Weaver]

Wow: somebody was allowed to get footage from the Nimrod 'graveyard' as they were setting it up. Given how touchy the security generally was about cameras, I'm surprised to see this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jEhYW1hL3o

[JayBee]

Thanks H for that, but so very very sad! 

[PR19_Kit]

Given how touchy the security generally was about cameras, I'm surprised to see this:

Yes, why WOULDN'T they let us see what they were doing with OUR money? 

[AeroplaneDriver]

I seen to remember reading that one of the big reasons that the whole project went off the rails was that the original Nimrods were to a degree "hand crafted" machines.  Each one ever so slightly different.  While this "olde world craftsmanship" is great for Aston Martins and one-off projects, it caused a nightmare when BAE suddenly found themselves trying to fit brand new parts built by robots with identical CAD tolerances across the fleet.  In effect there was going to be too much PSR for it to be cost effective in the environment.  It's a real shame though.  I remember an article in Air Forces Monthly when they were test flying the first ones, and they really hit on its ability to carry (I THINK) four Storm Shadows in the bomb bay, in effect giving it an effective secondary role as a force multiplying deep strike platform. 

Plus it just looks way cooler than a gray 737... 

[kitnut617]

I seen to remember reading that one of the big reasons that the whole project went off the rails was that the original Nimrods were to a degree "hand crafted" machines.  Each one ever so slightly different.

Yes Nick, I've read that too. I think that's because the Nimrods weren't 'new tool' in the first place. I think they were using converted Comet 4 airframes, I may be wrong here though. Plus the fact not very many were to be built either (less than 50 IIRC)

[AeroplaneDriver]

I seen to remember reading that one of the big reasons that the whole project went off the rails was that the original Nimrods were to a degree "hand crafted" machines.  Each one ever so slightly different.

Yes Nick, I've read that too. I think that's because the Nimrods weren't 'new tool' in the first place. I think they were using converted Comet 4 airframes, I may be wrong here though. Plus the fact not very many were to be built either (less than 50 IIRC)

I have read other articles that claim if BAE had just done a clean-sheet design and tool up for the entire airframe from the get-go, then it would have been a world beater that could have taken a lot of the (admittedly limited) P-8 market. 

Who knows if it's true...