Airshows UK Continued...

I will soon edit this page and remove most of the clips (unless I can find somewhere else to host them) so enjoy them now - right click and save target as to download.

First for April is a short movie clip of a KC-130 air tanker flypast at the Mildenhall Air Fete.... something went wrong with this demo which meant that the CH-53 it was supposed to be IDR'ing had to put down at Lakenheath. Go here for more info on the JC130 and some photos of what this would have looked like.

Here is a new one from the Flightline TV show for all fans of very low flying aircraft - not the Fulcrum but a crop-sprayer with the same name from Africa going under the electricity pylons to do its job.

The second new airshow video clip is from last year's (?) Paris Air Show with a variety of planes shown for a few seconds... you know the kind of 'I have a video mixer and I am going to use it' kind of jobbies... not only that 'I am going to put on some really naff muzak to tick off all those who enjoy the engine sounds'.... anyway in this minute-long epic enjoy everything from Rafale to airships and Airbuses plus some lovely afterburner glow of the Typhoon taking off... oh, a brief glimpse of a Sukhoi Su-27 with red smoke.

Back to the older stuff... Here is another video from Mildenhall of the arrival of the Patrouille de France... sits nicely alongside the Red Arrows one on page 1.

If you are lucky you can catch some brief snippets on local British TV but coverage is worse than ever. July means holiday airshows climax with the RIAT, I used to go when it was held at Greenham Common but have not been since the first time it moved to Fairford.

Up next is the NA Harvard trainer performing an impromptu aerobatic routine at Duxford. This video is the last part of a sequence showing a sprightly fly through and loop over Duxford's Control Tower. This is the last bit - I made mistake and uploaded the wrong file... still it shows a nice landing and taxi. To view the aerobatics you must go to JFK Tower.... fairly large files but worth it just for the sound of that engine....

In fact the whole scene is a pale shadow of what it used to be... time was when you could visit an airshow every weekend all through the summer. With so many UK bases closing and insurance rates so high there's only a handful left. Thankfully we have Discovery Wings which occasionally thrills but I always wonder why they must use music when the plane takes off etc... I want to hear the engine please!

Anyway here's some samples ripped from the TV.

1. Red Arrows and F117 over RIAT c/o ITV - I wonder how many different planes have flown with the Reds? Vulcan, Spitfire, Concorde, to name a few.

2. Longbow Apache movie clip when it visited Silverstone c/o ITV - an unusual venue for this beastie.

3. Typhoon video clip of its performance at RIAT 2003 c/o ITV. This is fairly short but you see some nice condensation when it pulls 'g'. BTW you can visit Birmingham news page for a viddy of the arival of the Typhoon in the wet. This site also has several other video clips such as the one by a pair of RN Sea Harriers and RNAF F16.

4. The RIAT 2003 departure day featured on the local news but only for a few moments so all I could capture was a few seconds of a Tornado/Lanc and an exquisite Polish Navy plane of the twin-engined kind I couldn't identify (shame on me). In fact it is a Bryza B-1R painted in WW2 RAF Coastal Command markings especially for RIAT. Go here to see more pics of this in all its many roles.

5. Also caught this one of a RAF helicopter firing flares over some camels in the Gulf.

6. The Harrier GR7 doing high speed runs and Derry turns at Mildenhall AF01, again apologies for no sound. This is a fairly big file, 5 megs, so please be patient.

Please go to the next page for Duxford's flying example of the B25 Mitchell and a video of it getting into the air.