Mikey Goes to Fairford

Oxfordshire's got some beautiful country in it, some incredibly wonderful villages, wonderful buildings. I guess that's why to live there I'd have to absolutely sacrifice any morality I've got and make some proper money in life, or get six numbers. Gorgeous anyway, and I had to pootle through a lot of it; Warwickshire too, on my way to this year's Air Tattoo at Fairford. Broke the journey overnight in Warwickshire, having learned my lesson from a few long distance trips that have gone wrong this year - dropped in to see my mate Ellie and her fella Neil. Quickly made friends with his dog, then popped into the garden to take a look at how the Mike Border is getting on. Last time I saw these plants they were leaving my house in the back of her car; she's of the gardening fanatic persuasion and the two of us with her daughter gutted and redesigned my once terrible garden in a single day last summer.... all saveable surplus plants from the jungle were donated to any uses she could think of rather than going in the composter; she made up a whole new border in her garden with them and rather excellent it looks too. Nice to make a contribution.

Anyway; set off at stupid'o clock in the morning for the short final leg to the airfield, and a good job I did too.... one navigation blunder; one articulated recycling truck in the back lanes and one slow moving vintage car (an Austin Seven... I looked) meant a frustrating journey for me, which gave me time to consider a thing or two.... for instance, I really hoped the US Air Force hadn't done what the RAF's done and replace most of their flying demonstration's with "Role Demo's"... there's just too many British people going to be there for that to be a good idea with the A-10 tankbuster about, it'd be carnage.

Anyway, arrived at the airfield and got all the gubbins sorted, cameras, backpack, waterproofs. It struck me as I pulled on my heavyweight super-dooper walking boots I'd brought along for walking the airfield all day - far more punishing on the ankles than you'd think if you've not done this before - that the last time I wore them was this time last year, going up Mt Stol on the Slovene-Austrian border and they still had mud on them from it. Soon wear that off and get them broken in again. Made my way through the queues and security to get in. Quite a hassle that; it did strike me as I considered the cost, the security, the constant blocking of the pedestrian access with criss-crossing airshow traffic with associated delays for the visitors; that maybe this has stopped being fun. Who knows. At the end of the day, I still considered it a good day out, so I guess not.

Now. Here's something you're not expecting in this review. Ex girlfriends. Sometimes they cheer you up in ways you're not expecting. Strolling off from the food van where I'd picked up my bacon roll and cup of tea, I looked across and espied an old former friend for whom I've no longer got much time, and if he's there, in all probability so should be my ex of about four years ago, with whom I've not had a civil word with since. And indeed, right on cue there she was. Didn't see me, but I saw her. Older, portly and with an extremely ill advised blonde highligh hairdo. Made a note to myself "maybe I aught to buy him a beer". Heh, it's nasty and I'm not a nasty person (???) but isn't it a feeling of grim satisfaction to see that your ex is old, fat, frumpy and looking silly. Whereas I just look in a mirror and....... oh.

Heheheheh..... schadenfreude is your friend !!!

Anyway, upwards and onwards, and in the case of the flying display, literally. Marched onwards towards the showground, to make my way around the static displays. This is a day long job, even on the reduced scale that the air tattoo is nowadays. In the old days you could do the static, watch the flying or go through the stalls but never all three. Even now, it's just an overload. As usual, the ropes around the aircraft were too tight for photography but I'd thought about that and packed a wide angle lens which could handle it. What it didn't deal with was the fact that every single aircraft had a red traffic cone parked close in front of it, with a number and an exhortation to go and buy a checklist, whereupon the casual visitor could find out what each plane was. Well, I'm not a casual visitor and they didn't do my photos much good!!! Muppets! Had a good mooch around the static; some gems in there but you have to accept that it's not going to be of the scale of the Fairfords of old that I used to attend; it can't be... all airforces have rationalised, the budgets are tighter and lots of them are off bombing other people in their own countries. But there was groovy aeronautical goodness to be found in the in the static park.

Was a little peeved by the including of a couple of the new generation of unmanned drones in the static.... the manufacturer Northrop-Grumman have a display of this sort thing, they'll probably be down at Farnborough next week so it's an easy thing for them to do, but I always wonder what the point of these arms business displays at a public airshow are. Part of an insidious campaign to convince us that bombs are good? For me it gets away from the point of flying; the original point was to take men further; to be like the birds, that's what the Montgolfier brothers and the Wrights were about, and after them Cody, Alcock and Brown, Johnston, Von Zepplin, Bleriot... all about pushing the envelope further. Can't help but feel the rush for unmanned aviation is yet another step backwards. We seem to be doing a lot of it lately.

Anyway!! Now, the flying display.... kicked off good and early with a Finnish Hornet, then continued in good weather and good displays from such good things as a Russian built Hind gunship (genuinely scarey piece of kit), a couple of F16 demo's and Eurofighters from the Spanish and British air forces. The yanks had a thing or two flying and were probably feeling all mushy and patriotic when they put up this "historical formation" of Mustang and Strike Eagle....

... and then the Brit's went and aced them later with the four origional Battle of Britain Flight Spitfires and the Red Arrows! Can't but wonder if Red Leader was sniggering when he saw the American flypast, knowing what was planned....

On with some more of the flying...

Just 'coz I'm not in Slovenia doesn't mean I don't get my alpine fix.... PC-9 training plane from their air force.... (above)

Back to the Yanks... the usual pretty airbourne drill sequence from the Thunderbirds team, not as fluid as the European displays but it impresses the martially minded Americans. Luckilly I was far enough from the speakers not to have to plug in my Ipod to drown out the patriot brainwashing nonsense that comes from their commentator at these events. As an aside, they come with all their own support kit in a transport plane, including a start up generator specially painted in the team colours.... I wasn't close enough to their lineup to get a picture of it, but some unkind spotters have been referring to this as "Pimp my Genny" since they arrived in the UK last week :o)

And rather a pretty display from the Italian Frecce Tricolori, their display team who I remember best for scaring the crap out of me at Bentwaters in 1988 just one week before they went splat on top of the crowd at Ramstein. But the last few times I've seen them are replacing that old uneasyness I've had for them for a decade or so with a feeling of just how damned well Italian national colours work as smoke against a sky background...

Wandering back out of the airfield, noticed that the fine art of zapping is still alive and well... the Irish crew didn't leave their new shiney helicopter on it's own all day, maybe fearing a return visit from the RAF puma squadron who's aircraft they stuck Irish national markings onto while their backs were turned; but the German Army (HEER) CH-53 crew weren't so wise....

And that's it for another year, just the two hundred mile drive home via fatigue, partial dehydration, heaven's own sunset over Coventry and a whole lot of road that I don't really remember, which is in itself quite worrying !!!!