Saturday 11 July 2009

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


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