A couple of weeks ago Dad and I finally managed to see some aircraft! We went to one of Duxford Museum's Flying Days which was celebrating 19 Squadron, and it was SO GOOD to finally be back at an airshow. As I've said in previous blogs airshows and aircraft are so key to my mental health, I can be lifted so much from seeing planes and the general atmosphere at shows (ditto for gigs). The last airshow I made it to was Duxford Battle Of Britain Airshow in September 2019 and the last airshow that I blogged about was Airbourne 2019. I did post a blog last year of my Favourite Airbourne Moments from the last few years but naturally it wasn't nearly the same. This is partly why I'm so excited to finally be blogging about planes again!
Just after we arrived there was an announcement that "our friends from RAF Lakenheath have a couple of F15s in the area and will be giving us a flypast" so we dashed to the flight line to get the best view. They screamed along the runway and then back over us, there's nothing like the ground being shaken by jet noise! Of course I have a video of it on my YouTube -
Yay!!!!!!
After our most excellent surprise we went to look at the hangers. There are so many different exhibits and hangers to look around at Duxford I'd recommend getting there well before any flying is due to start so that you aren't rushing.
Here are a few photos of some of the hanger contents -
Lancaster being photobombed by a Mosquito.
Hanging with a Spitfire.
My favourite ever plane the Panavia Tornado 💓
Lightning
Jaguar
A pretty early Harrier
Mosquito
Concorde needs no introduction!
There's no mistaking a VC-10
The NHS Spitfire
The flying display started with a Spitfire MK1 and a Hurricane MK1 -
Hurricane getting airborne behind 'Miss Helen' (more of her later)
The beautiful sound of those Rolls Royce Merlin Engines was followed up by the Yak 50 which was impressively agile.
Next up was the unmistakeable sound of the Harvard's radial engine
I really like the paint scheme on this Harvard
This is a Nanchang CJ-6 a Chinese WW2 era plane which I've never seen before
We had a great display from an always crowd-pleasing Extra 300
Finishing up the day was the beautiful P51 Mustang 'Miss Helen'. Whilst I adore Spitfires and Hurricanes, it's been so long since I've heard the whistle of a Mustang (see video below) I was overjoyed to see her once more.
As you can see I took plenty of photos of her .......
Her silver paintwork glinted so beautifully in the afternoon sunshine.
One of the things that pleased me about the day was that I was finally able to use my new video camera that I bought at the start of the year when I thought that RIAT, Airbourne et al were still going ahead. After a false start at Headcorn Airshow back in June (it rained, nothing flew, enough said) I was able to have a quick play with it at Goodwood (for more on that have a look at my blog here) and I was pretty happy with the results but cars tend to go in a straight line rather than perform victory rolls so I wanted to make sure the new camera was up to the task and worth the money. You guys can be the judge but I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.
I have tickets to the Battle Of Britain show at Duxford (the flying list already looks fantastic) and am planning on going to Bournemouth Airshow ) on Sat 4th Sept with a local coach company and possibly getting up at stupid o'clock on the Sunday morning to go up on the train if the weather is bad/I missed something the day before. Hopefully both will go ahead and I've now had both my covid jabs without turning into a zombie (take that anti-vaxxers and covid deniers) which gives me a bit more hope. I'll keep you all updated!
I hope you all enjoyed my first airshow blog in ages with hopefully a few more to come this year.
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