AeroVenture Home of South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum

South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum is a
registered charity number 1051994

member of the British Aviation
Preservation Council

Wednesday 9th July 2008

AeroVenture, Dakota Way
Airborne Road, Doncaster Leisure Park
Doncaster, DN4 7FB, UK

tel 01302 761616

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XV677 Being Collected

XV677 Bow Door Fitted

XV677 Tail Fitted

XV677 Tail Pylon Fitted

XV677 In Service Photos

25/07/06 AeroVenture Saves Sea King HAS.6 XV677 from Scrapping

Nigel Porembski reports on saving Sea King HAS.6 XV677 from the Scrapman

In late 2004 news came to light of a Sea King that was due to be turned into pop cans. Phil Jarvis and I decided to set the wheels in motion to try and save her. The aircraft in question, Westland Sea King HAS.6 XV677 (WA665), was being used at HMS Sultan as an instructional airframe which included skin repairs. She has been totally stripped of all serviceable and useful parts with just the main fuselage section remaining but I hope you will agree, a solid base to start a restoration from.

There were two main reasons behind trying to save her, firstly, no museum within the UK has a Sea King as an exhibit, irrespective of it's condition and secondly, XV677 is a Falklands veteran, serving with 825 NAS during the conflict and AeroVenture has a dedicated Falklands exhibition so she would fit in quite nicely.

March 2006 and after several months of ups and downs the news we had been waiting for came, the papers were signed, the cheque sent, 677 was now ours. Before I go any further I would like to pass on my sincere thanks to both Pete and Mick at HMS Sultan for without their help I would not need to write this piece in the first place and for that both Phil and I will always be grateful.

Now that the easy part is done the hard ones begin, firstly, getting 677 to her new home at AeroVenture. At 35ft x 12 ft x 7ft and weighing around 3 tonnes she's a little too big to stick in the boot of your car, then the arduous task of locating and acquiring all the parts needed to make 677 look complete, hopefully, both inside and out. I'm hoping that by the time you read this the relocation to AeroVenture will have been completed however, were under no illusions as to how long it could take for the restoration to be completed.

01/12/07 Bow Door Built and Fitted

Following a lot of hard work, a new bow door has been built and fitted by Nigel and Phil. The new bow door and many other components are part of a scrapped Sea King that was stripped down rivet by rivet to enable the service life of our Sea King fleet to be evaluated.

01/12/07 Tail Built and Fitted

XV677 is now proudly displayed with a new tail unit. This again was assembled from a kit of parts and was quite a build operation all by itself requiring hundreds of man-hours of assembly and rivetting.

10/05/08 Tail Pylon Built and Fitted

XV677 now has its tail pylon fitted, yet another major component assembled from the kit of parts. Phil and John are fitting the tail stabilizer.

A bunch of us fitted the tail, including John, Alan, Kev, Calum, Nigel, me and Phil. Calum and Kev restored the lift trolley just for this job - worked a treat!

Tail Pylon fitted and ready for rotors (click for large image).

Engine fod guard and port sponson are now ready for fitting.

Various Dated XV677 In Service Photos

Photo thanks to Tony Marimon, XV677 / N-69 (cn WA665), Westland Sea King HAS6, Carried on HMS Invincible, taken 21st January 1995, Palma de Mallorca port, Spain (click for larger image, then back to return to this page)

Photo thanks to Shaun Connor, XV677, Westland Sea King HAS6, Glasgow-Prestwick Airport, taken 10th August 1985 (click for larger image, then back to return to this page)

Nigel and Phil are calling this 'Project 677' and have created their own dedicated website, click here for more www.project677.co.uk

Unless other credit given photographs on this site are copyright Jim Keable 2002-2008