A couple of weeks ago Dad and I finally made it back to The Royal International Air Tattoo after two years of Covid delays and my god was the wait worth it! My 2017 blog explains what RIAT is all about. As with the previous two years we stayed at Townsend Farm which gets better and better each year (especially when they decided to show Top Gun in the bar on the Thursday night!).
We arrived on the Thursday at the same time as the Red Arrows
Good company to be in!
Obviously I was the best dressed person on the campsite .....
Once we were set up it was a case of sit back and let the planes entertain us with their PDAs (Practice displays) and arrivals.
Gripen
Master
Spitfire
F16
Another F16
Swiss F18 (more of them later)
Hercules
HIP
We also got our first glance at the stars of the show the Republic Of Korea Black Eagles as they performed some flypasts.
Here's a round up of the day's arrivals and PDAs
Evening at the campsite
On Friday we went into RAF Fairford to watch the show and look around the immense static park (RIAT is famed for having a massive static display).
En Route to the airfield (yes this is now my Facebook profile photo)
Black Eagles
A glimpse into the future with a mock up of the RAF's future aircraft Tempest
Air forces put a lot of effort into artwork for their aircraft for the show
The 'RIAT Eye' made a fun backdrop for photos
A400M
The show was opened by the Red Arrows performing a flypast with a Poseidon before they went into their own display.
Here are some of the highlights of the day -
The Blades performed a flypast with an oil spill response aircraft
Hinde
Gripen
I was excited when this Skyhawk arrived during the show due the aircraft type's starring role in Top Gun
The Austrian air force performed a Quick Reaction Alert demo where an intruding Hercules was 'escorted' to land before the two Typhoons engaged in a dog fight
As I mentioned before the Black Eagles were utterly amazing!
Another highlight of the weekend was the Swiss F18
I'd always wanted to see a Drakken and I manged to get a photo of it with the E4 Nightwatch
It then landed right in front of us!
Some other highlights from Friday's show -
Saturday was spent watching the show from the campsite which in some ways is better as the aircraft fly directly overhead which meant I was able to get some cool photos of the Typhoon display.
The Red Arrows opened the show with another flypast, this time with the RAF Voyager 'Vespina'
I also experimented with the time lapse app on my phone during their display and it looked pretty cool.
One of my other favourite display teams were on display the Italian Frecce Tricolori
I also made a time lapse of them
As well as a regular YouTube video 😉
We had a flypast from the Airbus Beluga which is quite possibly the happiest looking plane ever!
Gripen overhead
Greek F16 with a 747
We also got a preview of the Belgian F16's display ahead of Airbourne next month -
