Odd VC 10 pic

[Garry Russell]

Hi Ben

I think that was sold on the line an finished as normal....but an interesting theory :think:

Garry

[TSR2]

Hi Garry, yes, pretty sure it was, but I was thinking if they had got as far as registering it, they may have had the base colours on, and if BUA wanted it in service quickly...

Who knows

[Garry Russell]

Funny that I've never see that before and if it was the first one in FF livery and did demos you would think that most of the stock pics of the early days would be like that......as it is with the One-Eleven.

So maybe it is as you say a quick lines and titles on a basic fix

Garry

[Archer]

That's an interesting photo. I've never seen that variation before on an airframe. If you look at the two images at the top right here: http://www.vc10.net/History/other_opera ... 20Airlines
The first one does show a similar scheme on a model, so perhaps this is the first airframe on trial. The second shot shows what happens with a faded print of a VC10 photographed under harsh lighting, the red of the lettering fades but the bullet is still clearly dark blue.

[Garry Russell]

It never fails to amaze me what unknowns can turn up after so many years

Garry

[clavel9]

The newer BUA scheme was introduced in 1967 so my best guess is the tail/bullet has been painted white with a small Jack added in advance of the new livery being applied. The new stripes probably would have covered the smaller Jack.

[TSR2]

Introduced in '66 ;-)

[clavel9]

Introduced in '66 ;-)

I stand corrected.

I doubt they painted the whole fleet overnight so it's still my best guess!

[Garry Russell]

This repaint theory makes some sense

The titles appear to be of the size and position of the later livery and could even be black....they don't look particually red to me. So perhaps during a temp hangar lay up the white was repainted and new titles added or perhaps just the fin. The small jack is the size used in the later livery despite it's wrong position. In fact finding a jack was needed the new smaller size may well have been all they had so stuck it on in a more representative position than the later tail scheme.

Part paints are not uncommon as these two Tridents show with their wings repainted in BA grey. G-AVFO spent quite some time like that....certainly more than a year

http://tynetransport.fotopic.net/p44133103.html

http://tynetransport.fotopic.net/p44133566.html

Perhaps with this VC 10 it made just one flight which would account for it's rarity.

The date given is 1967 but I treat dates like that with caution. I have pics of BEA RS in the "mid fifties" and a peony Viscount dated 1966....clearly wrong....... but perhaps in this case 1967 is right and that puts it right in the repaint time and the jet fleet was quickly re painted.

Garry

[Archer]

And the three aircraft were delivered in September and October 1964 and July 1965, so they may have flown in 'old colours' for a while. I'm not that familiar with the various BUA schemes though, they switched to a blue/brown cheatline at some point. Would this 'white bullet' scheme be a transition from a previous scheme to the blue fin bullet/red letters scheme or from this scheme to the blue/brown cheatline? With the model shown on my page I'm inclined to think that it is a pre-1964 scheme (those models were usually produced way before the aircraft emerged).