Propellorheading in the damp, finding answers to questions

Don'tcha love an answer. I know I do.

Back in March I blogged the following here, after a visit to Doncaster's Propellorheading Museum; I know I did 'coz I cut and pasted it...

" Strange... they've gotten these aircraft up in a Falklands 25 year exhibition, but the Gazelle they had ... another Falklands vet', actually shot down on the day of the British invasion is missing. Wonder where that's vanished to. " The answer is "off to a REME workshop to be totally restored as a memorial", which I personally think is very, very groovy. It turned up in an exhibition at the airshow at Waddington on Saturday, which someone's actually gone to quite a lot of effort to put together; a shame the show was cursed.

Before...

After...

Isn't that better. Note the memorial crosses on the landing skid... the pilot of this chopper died making the crash landing. Actually the show was also inadvertantly pretty Falkland'centric; both the Royal Navy Lynx helicopters were there in 1982, the one in the static was actually on the ill fated HMS Sheffield when it was hit, but no mention was made of that anywhere; you've got to be an anorak called Mike with the definitive history of that air war in your library to know that sort of thing. Additionally, they have the very Vulcan bomber that hit Port Stanley airfield preserved on the airfield, and the Falklands exhibition took place in the very spot where the bomber used to stand, but they've fixed it in place on the far side of the airfield now.

Anyhoo.... strolled down to the airfield with no hangover - oh no officer - in very good time after a good early start. Beat the rush, clearly learned a thing or two in the EEEEEEEK years that I've been going to airshows, and fought with the weather all day. If perchance you're reading this in the Gobi Desert, you'll not be aware that we've got this thing called rain, we've had rather a lot of it and just in case we thought we'd had it all for the year, they found even more to throw at us at the weekend. Lots of it. Oh yes. So, the majority of the day was spent shower dodging (ahah, just like life, that's why my shirts are so reeky(JOKE!!!!)); the early start actually aided in this as I was able to park the car in the middle of the airfield, right in the midst of everything; in fact spent a good chunk of the flying display sheltering from the elements in GLC, eating packup, with one ear on the tannoy to time my sprints through the mud get quick pictures of whatever took my fancy. Clocked my first Mk.4 Nimrod flying; nice to see the Indians fly, even though it's just a flypast as they're not display cleared here. The Typhoon's high energy approach was noticeable in the amount of vapour clouds it formed as it went around (it's an aerodynamics thing, don't worry about it, just looks groovy), and the Red Arrows had to abort their display halfway through, only the third time in EEEEEEK years I've ever seen them do this. They're flying with only eight jets this year and as a result it all looks a little bit lopsided; I noticed I was standing next to a fit looking guy in a red flightsuit and expensive looking millitary issue leather jacket, turned out I was actually standing next to the guy having the worst day on the airfield. Red Three, the pilot that's buggered everything up by falling over and breaking his wrist shortly after he's completed the six month Arrows's display training, but still has to do the full "ambassador for the airforce" malarky anyway. I'd have taken a photo but frankly I didn't have the heart.

The display continued to suffer... somehow the Falcons free-fall team managed to find a gap in the crowd and jumped from only about two thousand feet; but the much vaunted "RAF Role Demo" got cancelled (not many proper display routines this year, the whole airforce is off bombing Arabs), only after the second wave of jets had been sat running on the end of the runway ready to go for about ten minutes, with the commentator hyping up their take off perfomance and thrill-factor, before they had the humiliating taxi past the crowd to return to their standigns. Heh, if you were of a cruel and cynical mindset you might say that's a pretty accurate role demo; burn a lot of fuel, cost a lot of money, train to the hilt then do naff all. Anyhoo, there was a bunch of explosives left to get rid of that they weren't going to remove by hand, and two Marham Tornadoes already in the air, so they let them through anyway and let the bangers off as they went past; simulated airfield attack. Actually rather cool.

So, a wet and soggy show ended with a squelch back to the car feeling the first signs of that particular Propellorhead malady "Fairford Crotch" (trust me, don't ask) but I had a much better day than those folks who turned up on Sunday. The crowd had been arriving for two hours when they scrubbed the show due to the fact that the car parks were basically drowning, and the police wanted to put there people elsewhere in the waterlogged county to deal with other problems. A bummer, first major airshow I've known cancelled in a long, long time. Even the mudbath at Binbrook in '87 didn't scrub. A certain amount of conspiracy chatter on 't 'net since then that it was actually for security reasons; allegations of a bomb threat but according to people I know with very senior RAF sources, it was weather, pure and simple. Damned shame considering how much effort folks put in. Not a whole lot that can be done about it I guess.