I’ve seen plenty of threads one here about aircraft and there seems to be a few enthusiasts on the forum. Does anyone know a place where I might purchase the nose cone of an old jet to use as part of an art installation for a music festival?

It needs to be big enough to stand up in – ideally the size of a transit van, so no fighter jets and no 747’s 🙂

probably cheaper,quicker to make a fake one surely?
Or wait for the great british winter and make an igloo.

Scrap yards near air fields. Or search google for the 28dayslater urban explorer website and then find details of scrap yards on there.

http://www.airsalvage.co.uk/index.asp

Thanks for the suggestions chaps. I’d seen the airsalvage one after googling but it looks a bit official(expensive), will have a mooch around the 28days forums and see if I get any further.

A remake of a Berlin song?

Air salvage international as mentioned above is your best bet. Theres a very small network of aircraft dismantallers as theres a chain of custody issue with some planes – to do with bits of depleted uranium used in some fusilages. Regular scrappies won’t touch the stuff unless its come through recognised sources.

When I was looking there were only really three people dealing with whole planes and ASI deal with the lion’s share. The others seemed to only handle one or two craft a year, not that ASI handle that many more. The guy that runs it is a bit of a hoarder it seems, so stuff sits around there for longer.

If you are really interested I can try and remind myself who the other two were, I’ll have emails from them kicking about.

Scrap yards are of limited use though, ASI and others sell the bits of the airframe that they can find a market for – the pretty bits like the cockpit for decoration and the bits that engineers are wanting to run tests on, after than they are ripped to pieces before being sent to scrap – nothing is recognisably plane when it leaves, it would cost too much to transport that way. Nothing is going to get from an airfield to a scrap yard without passing through ASI’s hands or those of one of their competitors. But I know which scrap yard most of the stuff eventually ends up in if thats of use, and they are helpful guys too.

To be honest the nose end is pretty much the most expensive bit. I organised buying a BAE 147 air frame from there for about £8 – 10k, but don’t be surprised if they ask for the same just for the cockpit on its own. Even small planes are big when it comes to getting them transported – 737 sized stuff is still 3 – 3.5m in diameter and your going to need specialist transport to move it. What they might have is just the nose bit itself, rather than the cockpit, most of the planes in the yard when I was there had them missing though I can look through my pictures of the yard and see if any were kicking about. They were having a bit of a spring clean when I was there mind. Between that front cap and the windscreen is an incredibly complex and strong structure, neatly separating it from the plane in practically impossible, even crunching it up with ASI’s giant metal dinosaur is a very tall order.

What happened with your combine harvester tammy bunnet? I was looking out for it on the coverage of Belladrum but didn’t spot it

Cotswold Airport at Kemble have several planes being dismantled at the moment. You could always try your luck late at night with a chainsaw. Sneaking it out through the fence might be tricky, mind…

i did my fire training at birkenshaw at west yorks, and notice theyve got a nose cone that i assumed was for crash training. dont know whether they ever use it tho. long shot but you could maybe sound them out about it?

http://www.vwinme.com/

A quick visit to Dalcross with a chainsaw may be in order… 🙂

Found the other two dismantlers

GJD Services

P3 Aviation

The scrap yard where all this ends up in a scrunched up heap is

Gibb Scrap

All very much dahn sarrf I’m affraid

I’ve done this. I designed a logo and company ID for a client that was based around World War 2 Nose Art.

For the companies office I wanted it painted on the side of a B-17. So I had a sheet metal place fabricate one for me. It wasn’t anywhere near as expensive as you’d think. In fact having the side of a B-17, including painting probably came in at a similar cost to some bog-standard bland corporate signage

Where are you based? Want me to dig the details out for you?

I’ve done this

Can I just say, only on STW could someone come on, wanting the nose cone of an aeroplane (insert other random request) and find someone that’s done it before!

The old Avro works golf club in Woodford, Cheshire, has Vulcan nose cones as shelters on some of the tees.

Standing inside a Vulcan in the pouring rain, waiting to batter a little white ball into the distance is a slightly odd experience.

http://golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,44787.0

Try here, Arizona.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1324/1417999989_2f9c212f2e.jpg

Can I just say, only on STW could someone come on, wanting the nose cone of an aeroplane (insert other random request) and find someone that’s done it before!

That’s exactly why I asked here!

Thanks for all the suggestions. Binners, that might be an idea if it isn’t too much hassle for you.
Sadly aircraft dismantlers don’t have fields of old planes stacked up where you can go in and ask for ‘the nose off that one please’. 🙂
It’s all a bit more sensible than that.

I’ve been looking at the appropriate tool epicyclo.

The giant bunnet became a giant red toadstool which was used as a bandstand for buskers. It wasn’t really big enough for Jock the Reaper as we put an extra stage on the front of the combine. The remains of an old nissen hut were used to make a bigger roof instead.
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P1000729 by LOVATSTOVES, on Flickr[/img]

Appearing in Classic Tractor this month and Classic Combines (yes really!!) smetime soon!!

Nice!

ASI have two premises – one at Kibble where the bigger planes get taken apart one, one at Alton in Hampshire which is where smaller – low-loaderable size planes go. Its the Alton one where most of the hoarding happens and the planes there are 737-sized (3.5m dia) and smaller. There were a few stand alone cockpits there when I bought our plane last spring. They were from the floor up (ie the below floor bit where the baggage goes was removed, so not the full 3.5m height, still quite wide though.

A mid-section of fusilage would be much, much cheaper than the front bit though, theres a market for the front bits as flight simulators and as ornaments, not so for the middle bit – nobody uses them and theres less material and less scrap value in them too.

Give them a call and ask them what they’ve got, once you’ve got the makes and models you’ll find lots of enthusiasts that have made scale sketchup models of them and put then on the Sketchup 3d warehouse, so you can download models and check the volumes and usefulness of them.

Excuse the thread revive…… Just sitting in Inverness airport, the industrial estate next door has a handful of whole and partial fusilages- front of a nimrod, bring the biggest plus small jets and maybe something a bit helicoptery. All decommissioned but not scrapped in the way asi break things up. Obviously too spendy but….. As they are relatively accessible why not see if you can take a fibreglass cast of one?

When James May did his build a lifesize-Airfix-kit program they used a company specialising in building the fibreglass Spitfires etc you see outside airports.

Bet they could knock up a nose cone in an afternoon.

Try approaching Cobham Advanced Composites Ltd. at Stevenage. I worked there last year and they’d got hundreds of them, should imagine the Nimrod ones will be going cheap but the Tornado nose cones where bloody impressive.
By the way did you know they are fibreglass to allow radar equipment mounted inside to function.

You, sir, are awesome.

Sometimes you get fed up of the “how should I invest my £100,000” or “which of my 9 bikes should I get rid of” or “I have loads of money, **** off you tossers”

I like this though. Great work 🙂