This summer I fulfilled a life-long plane geek dream of going to the Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT) for the first time.
RIAT is the UK's (and must surely be one of the world's) biggest air show. It's held over 3 official show days at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. Whilst it only has 3 official days, in reality it stretches over nearly a week with people arriving at the campsites dotted around the airfield as early as Wednesday to watch the
arrivals.
We drove up on the Thursday, whilst a large proportion of the journey was spent by my parents arguing with the Sat Nav that tried to send us up ever smaller country lanes, we were lucky enough to see the
U2 Spy Plane in the distance arriving at the show.
As we got nearer to the campsite we were treated to some of the Cotswolds' famous yellow brick buildings. I've actually been to the Cotswolds before, a college trip to Stratford-Upon-Avon but all I can honestly remember from that trip is my friends and I chasing a bee out of the room that we were staying in, resulting in much squealing and flapping of pillows.
Our campsite,
Townsend Farm had a beautiful farmhouse and a barn used for weddings etc (or in this case 100s of hungry campers in need of a burger and a beer!).
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| The farmhouse |
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Barn and campers! |
Now I must point out that when I mention Dad, Mum and I camping I really mean 'glamping' (although they will deny it). My idea of camping is the festival experience tent, groundsheet, loo rolls being a prized possession, port-a-loos (if you're lucky) and a hair-wash in a washing up bowl being considered luxury. Instead we took Dad's off-road caravan. He designed and built it himself and boasts a pull out stove, awnings that can be attached either side (I had my own personal bedroom), it's completely powered by solar panels, has a built in music system and even an attachable shower tent! It immediately attracted the attention of a group of army engineers when we pulled into the field, a pretty good indication of how cool it is! Even though it still resembles a burger van (sorry Dad).
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| Stolen off of Dad's Facebook, sadly there was no beach available on-site |
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| Setting up the caravan whilst I was scanning the skies |
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| Aaaand relax |
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| The caravan even comes with optional fairy lights, very useful when finding your way back in the dark! |
The campsite is right next to the runway so we were in the ideal spot to see aircraft landing. I'd assumed that we wouldn't see much until we went into the show the day after, boy was I wrong. From the moment we pulled up aircraft were coming over left, right and center!
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| The first 'official' RIAT snap was of these two Tutors arriving |
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| Camera at the ready! |
Best of all one of the first aircraft that came over when we arrived were two Tornados. Anyone who knows me will know I worship at the alter of Tornados and they're my absolute favourite aircraft. So to look up just 5 minutes after we'd pulled in and see a pair coming in lead to squeals of excitement. (Sorry to all the other campers).
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| Tea and Tornados - perfect! |
After that aircraft were coming in literally every 5 minutes, in fact we saw as many aircraft in those few hours as one would see at an all day airshow!
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| Typhoons |
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| No zoom needed! This Hercules nearly scraped the solar panels off of the top of the caravan! |
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| Poseidon on final approach |
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| The planes weren't the only interesting birds around. These buzzards are beautiful |
The other benefit of arriving early was getting a sneak peek at the PDAs (Public Display Authorisations - not diplays of affection .... that would be weird ...) and rehearsals from various teams.
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The Midnight Hawks (lucky we saw them on Thursday as they were unable to fly on Saturday due to the weather)
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We were also able to see the
Patrouille Suisse PDA, unfortunately for Mum and Dad this lead to a lot of Top Gun quotes from me. The team fly F5 Tigers which were used as the fictional
'MIG-28s'' in the film.
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| "Woah MIG-28s! No-one's been this close before!" |
We also got a sneak-peek at the USAF
Thunderbirds display and, most excitingly, the late addition to the show of a Ukrainian Airforce SU27 Flanker. We used to see Flankers at loads of shows back in the late 90s/early 00s and it was great to see one again.
You can see clips of the Tornado, Typhoon, Hercules, Midnight Hawks, A400M and SU27's arrivals and PDAs on my
YouTube channel.
I wanted to make sure I remembered everything I saw over the weekend so made sure I wrote it all down -
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| Combining my love of lists and planes. |
Despite being on holiday I woke up early on Friday morning.
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| I call this 'geeking anticipation' face |
I'd just drifted back off to sleep only to be rudely re-awakened by the Thunderbirds and 2 F22s taking off just after 7.30 (Best alarm clock ever!!).
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| Morning greetings from a Globemaster |
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| Post 'luxury' washing up bowl treatment |
We'd chosen to go into the show itself on the 'quieter' Friday. The short walk to the base meant walking under the flight path and nearly getting flattened by a Typhoon and a Sea King coming in to land (not quite as close as this encounter at
RAF Waddington and yes before you ask that would be my dream).
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| Annoyingly I didn't have the camera ready to catch it as it flew right over us |
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| Hi there |
As we got in to the show we were greeted by the return of the two 'alarm clock' F22 Raptors.
The airshow opens at 7.30am and now I see why, the static display is almost 5 miles long! We didn't see a huge amount as we didn't want to miss the flying. I did, however, manage to stumble across an old friend .....
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| I'm a Tornado fan-girl and proud! |
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| Mum and Dad doing 'patient parents' expressions |
RIAT is known for it's special combinations of aircraft (see the Red Arrows & Vulcan back in
2015) and we were treated to a joint flypast by the Red Arrows & The Thunderbirds -
The mighty reds then officially opened the show and set the standard for the rest of the day
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| Wing to wing! |
If you like F-16s then RIAT is the show for you! With F-16s from the Belgian, Turkish and US Airforces and of course the F-16s operated by the Thunderbirds it's practically an F-16 convention!
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| The Belgian Air Force F-16 |
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| CV-22 Osprey |
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| The RAF Typhoon 'Bringing The Noise' |
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| The Chinook display is always good fun |
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I really enjoyed this Slovenian PC9 trainer, it was incredibly maneuverable, I believe the pilot won
one of the many awards handed out at the end of the show.
The theme of RIAT 2017 was the celebration of a 100 Years of the US Airforce (USAF), to mark it there was a special flypast of types operated by the USAF in the UK.
But the star of the show (aside from the static Tornado obviously) was the F-22 Raptor. Just wow!
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| "We're going ballistic Mav, go get him!" |
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| "Let's turn and burn" |
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| An utterly insane display |
We watched the show from the comfort of the caravan on Saturday - in my humble opinion there's nothing as patriotic as enjoying a full English fry up and cup of tea whilst watching the Red Arrows.
Unfortunately the British 'summer' got in the way of some of the earlier displays, the F-22, Typhoon, F-18 & Midnight Hawks had to call off their performances.
Thankfully I got to see the Italian Airforce Tornado IDS -
It was the first Tornado display I've seen in years and was full of my favourite low altitude high-speed passes (surely the best bit of any jet display let's be honest).
We had some really low passes by both the Red Arrows -
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| I spent the whole display trying to get a patriotic photo of one of them with this RAF flag, unfortunately this was the best I got ..... |
The best moment of the day came courtesy of the Battle Of Britain Memorial Flight (BBMF). Anyone familiar with their displays will remember that they tend to do 2/3 passes in their formation before breaking for their solo pieces. We were lucky enough to have the formation break directly over our caravan, it was absolutely stunning. Unfortunately neither Dad nor I got that moment on film but I did manage a few other shots of them in all their glory -
The A400M is always worth watching, despite having seen it display for a number of years now it still staggers me how it can be thrown about the sky as if it was a fighter, rather than the heavy transport aircraft that it is.
Sticking with the theme of transport aircraft I recommend that you check out the 'Spartan' if it happens to be at an airshow with you. It's ridiculously maneuverable and the Italian Air Force put on a really spirited display with theirs'.
Adding to the USAF theme for the weekend shows were B-17 Flying Fortress 'Sally B' and a P-51 Mustang.
We were perfectly placed for the Thunderbirds display, we had a number of passes right over us. My new aim in life is to be the 5th Thunderbird who's job it is to fly fast and noisily along the display line!
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| My noisy spirit-guide |
I was really pleased to finally see a solo Rafale display, I'd heard lots of good things about for a few years and it didn't disappoint.
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| Such lovely weather |
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| I loved the paintwork |
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Heading over the top of us to land
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The one benefit of the bad weather that rolled back in for the end of the flying display was the vapourtastic photos I managed to get of the SU-27
You can see how close the planes came to us in my other YouTube video.
RIAT was such a fantastic weekend and it sounds silly to say but I really miss it. I'm already saving the pennies to try and convince Dad we need to go next year ...... possibly to a site with better toilets.
The things I've learned from the Air Tattoo are -
1. Don't go if for some odd reason you don't like F-16s
2. Go into the grounds as early as possible to have any chance of looking around the static display.
3. Be prepared to photograph as many trees and caravans as you do aircraft (right Dad?)
And finally ...
4. No matter how loud the display, Mum will always fall asleep!
Love Jen
XxxX
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