Yeovilton - a big disappointment...

...and it was mostly down to the weather. A few aircraft flew in the morning, but the show consisted mainly of helicopters. Lynx Mk blah de blah, Sea King Mk whatever and Merlin ad nausium, sorry, helicopters just don't do it for me. However there were some exciting bits, a Sea Vixen (remember those?) put on a sedate display, the Red Arrows flew in and did a couple of flypasts and buggered off to somewhere, a Rafale did some impressive manoeuvres and an F16 Fighting Falcon showed off its afterburner. With the cloud base at only 300ft anything fixed wing was very limited and much was cancelled, which included the Avro Vulcan, not just because of the weather, but because it had suffered a hydraulic oil leak in its braking system. Ah well, such is life.

It started to rain at around 16:00hrs just after the Commando assault got under way. We watched it for a while but the start was so slow and we got bored and walked back to the coach. Then it all started, very large bangs with huge plumes of flame and thick black smoke, and the dreaded helicopters buzzing around like demented buzzing around things. While we sat on the coach we could see bit of it going on in the distance and when a plume of fire and smoke went up it was some time before the boom reached us and when it did it shook the coach.

I have to say that despite all I had a good day.


Here's some short video clips:-

de Havilland Sea Vixen

Visitors from Belgium and a real flyer

The cross wind from the South made flying a little difficult and with the speed at around 12mph it was really beyond the limit for me, but I did manage to fly the Pico-Jet and both trainers, but I left the Yak on the ground.

Jack and Josie B from Gent in Belgium were here this weekend on a visit. They used to come to the Top Gun events which the Sedgemoor Club hosted many years ago. Its great to see them again. Jack flew a large scale Extra 300 with a 3W engine running on Avgas (used in full size aircraft) which gave a remarkably slow and smooth tick-over and good top end power. Its also equiped with a smoke system using lamp oil (not much smell). It produces an excellent smoke trail even in todays windy conditions.

Jackies Extra

Another unexpected visitor to the airfield was this beautiful owl brought here today by Paul and his wife.

The eyes are amazingly clear as crystal

And of course there's always a poser