Free Red Arrows display!

[mailee]

On my way to a customers home this morning I had to pass RAF Scampton and to my amazement there were two of the Red Arrows team practicing...with smoke on go! I just had to pull in to a layby and watch the display. Was kicking myself afterwards that I hadn't filmed it at the time. Watched the crossover between two of them and have to say they were pretty close! Those guys have nerves of steel, I was full of admiration for them. Strangely enough my customer is a Squadron Leader at Waddington.

 

[Seagoon]

Any time you pass Scampton between now and the end of February you will probably get a free show, although it will rarely be the full nine. It's common to see the opposed pair like you did, or a three which will be the 2 newcomers formating on one of the established pilots. Then it builds up till eventually you get the whole lot. Then they go off to Cyprus so they can polish the whole thing in virtually guaranteed good weather, before the start of the season.

 

[rafezetter]

Before they closed Filton Airfield in Bristol - they used to land there to re-fuel, and went right over the house, I always went running out if I heard a fighter jet engine, and when they all took off... BOY! what a roar.... but not as loud as the Vulcan was when it did a flyby to celebrate for airbus a couple of years ago. I'd have moved to right by the airfield if I could have!

 

[whiskywill]

Some years ago I was in my garden and heard a loud aircraft noise. I looked up to see the B2 Stealth bomber flanked by four F15 fighters on their way to an airshow at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. Brilliant!

 

[RogerS]

I love the low-flying jets that occasionally come over us. Remember with fond memories doing OB's from the Biggin Hill Air Display. One year happened to be walking past the end of the runway when the Vulcan took off...powered not by its normal banshee whine engines but by the Rolls Royce single Olympus Concorde engine slung underneath. Now that was awesome.

 

[Eric The Viking]

Not quite in the same league ( ) but a couple of years ago we were at the Needles Battery on the end of the Isle of Wight, when the Red Arrows were doing a display for the Bournemouth air day. The weather was pretty good, and it was a great and rather unusual angle to watch from.

When I worked in Stoke Gifford in the 1990s there was a Spitfire (late model but I don't know which mark), that was maintained at Filton, I guess by Rolls-Royce. It was wonderful to see and hear it doing aerobatics on summer evenings. All gone now - RIP Filton airfield.

E.

 

[markturner]

I am a big big aviation fan, in particular the military stuff. If you like the sound of jet engines, then a trip to RIAT is a must, the Mig29 is pretty amazing to hear, but the best noise I think has to be a toss up between the Phantom and the Bone ( B1) At the RIAT, both did a full speed low pass - practically turns your guts into jelly........awesome. The Phantom then did a full afterburner vertical climb - god knows what id did to my hearing abilities, but it was worth it.

My ultimate ambition is to save up and pay for ride in one of those - I think you go in a Mig29 for approx £6K .........and this wont last for ever either. Got to be the most amazing thing you can do full stop........

 

[RogerS]

.....

My ultimate ambition is to save up and pay for ride in one of those - I think you go in a Mig29 for approx £6K .........and this wont last for ever either. Got to be the most amazing thing you can do full stop........

Me too! I fancy the Lightning flight down in South Africa for £10k.

 

[dexter]

The French airforce practice their low level flying around here and we often get `buzzed` by two or three fast jets at a time.
When they are flying over you that low you really see just how fast these things are.
A few weeks ago I was out walking the dogs on a stunningly beautifull afternoon, there wasnt a cloud in the sky and the sun was setting, you could see for miles and miles. Out of the distance you could hear the disitinctive roar of the jet engine and within a few secconds a lone aircraft shot over me at at only a few hundred feet. Within seconds again it was gone into the distance.
I thought to myself,`I wonder if the pilot of that thing realises just how lucky he or she is to be doing that on a day like this`
I hope he/she did but perhaps at that speed and flying so low there isnt the time to enjoy it.

Dex

 

[JustBen]

I remember a while back seeing the Airbus A380 doing a low fly-by and tipping its wings over Derby.
It was for the staff at Rolls Royce.
I didn't know it was due to happen and at first I thought it was an aircraft coming in for a crash landing.
It's a huge aircraft and was extremely low.
Could almost see the rivets.

 

[monkeybiter]

I grew up in Ramsgate and the arrows were based at nearby Manston, we got to see them quite often when I was a kid.

I would appreciate it more now though!

 

[mailee]

I will also never forget when back in my teens we used to ride our motorbikes up to Binbrook and watch the Lightnings from one of the crash gates at the end of the runway. It was amazing to see them lift off the runway and then go vertical at a high rate of knots! Them were the days.

 

[Student]

Like Dexter. where my daughter lives in France in the valley of the upper Saone, there are two Armee de l'Air bases about 80 miles to the North and one 50 miles South West. As such, the valley is used for low level flight training and the aircraft, in pairs, usually come over at 200 feet which doesn't give you much warning - whoosh and they've gone. Occasionally, they break the sound barrier which makes everyone jump. The most annoying thing is when they practice dogfighting and you hear the noise of their engines as they try and outmanoeuvre one another high up in the sky and the noise goes on for hours; it's a bit like living near Heathrow.

If you want to see aircraft flying below you, go to the area near Machynlleth in mid-Wales where the Hawk trainers from RAF Valley practise low level flying down the valleys and you look down on them from the hilltops. There was a story that one of the local farmers got so fed up with the noise that he painted "P*ss off Biggles" on the roof of his barn. It didn't help as all the pilots, military and others, came to have a look.

 

[Jonzjob]

Red Arraz opposition pass? A bit like this you mean?



35mm film taken with my Nikon at Kemble about 16 years back. No photoshopping, completely as it was taken and a once in a liftime photo.

We are about 70 miles east of Toulouse and quite often get the A380 and A400M doing testing flights over us. We also get a LOT of the Grumand Tracker water bombers over us in the summer. I can tell roughly how far the fire is by their height. Lower = closer :shock: 2 are based at Carcassonne through the summer.

 

[maltrout512]

I love the low-flying jets that occasionally come over us. Remember with fond memories doing OB's from the Biggin Hill Air Display. One year happened to be walking past the end of the runway when the Vulcan took off...powered not by its normal banshee whine engines but by the Rolls Royce single Olympus Concorde engine slung underneath. Now that was awesome.

That was in the late 60's. It was at an air show with the one engine, took off then went near vertical. Concorde ended up with four and take off thrust approx 38,000 each engine. Those were the days.

 

[maltrout512]

The French airforce practice their low level flying around here and we often get `buzzed` by two or three fast jets at a time.
When they are flying over you that low you really see just how fast these things are.
A few weeks ago I was out walking the dogs on a stunningly beautifull afternoon, there wasnt a cloud in the sky and the sun was setting, you could see for miles and miles. Out of the distance you could hear the disitinctive roar of the jet engine and within a few secconds a lone aircraft shot over me at at only a few hundred feet. Within seconds again it was gone into the distance.
I thought to myself,`I wonder if the pilot of that thing realises just how lucky he or she is to be doing that on a day like this`
I hope he/she did but perhaps at that speed and flying so low there isnt the time to enjoy it.

Dex

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njyhTcqtmto

 

[Robbo3]

I know nothing about planes but as a child I sometimes saw the Red Arrows practicing when they were based at Little Rissington in Oxfordshire. I seem to remember they changed either to or from Gnats.

We have relatives that live close to RAF Brize Norton which has a public footpath around the western end. Inset into the path are some small brass markers for presumably the runway centre line & the number of degrees off centre. Unfortunately the land falls away so that the length of the runway can't be seen but one year some helicopter pilots gave us our own personal flying display.

They do a lot of pilot training at Brize Norton. The locals call it 'circuits & bumps' whereby the aircraft takes off, flies round a circuit & then does a practice landing with the wheels just skimming the runway before putting on the power & going round again ... & again ... & again. A right pain in the backside when trying to hold a conversation or watch TV.
They seem to have various civilian aircraft doing it too, or at least there is one with 'Virgin' plastered all over it.

Then we had the Yanks (with F111's?) at Upper Heyford, another base that has a public road with places where you could watch the aircraft take off & land. I was once told that you only got a couple of minutes before the American Military Police moved you on. Apparently no one was brave enough to argue with them as they had guns & threatened to use them.

Nope, don't like planes at all apart from Concorde. Got my ears blasted by that too whilst fishing near the end of the runway at Fairford. Can still tell most of them by the sound of the engine. Belfasts, Hercules, vulcans & concorde I found the most distinctive. VC10s are noisy & dirty, leaving a trail of black smoke whilst doing circuits - even worse when loaded. Nearly all gone now thank god. Tristars (or Tridents - 3 engines, one at the base of the tail) are a little quieter & the new C17s (only know because they sent one to the Phillipines) have an audio trick that as they pass they go pop, then quiet as if the engines had stopped, then carry on as normal.

Then there's the Falcons parachute display team ... but we won't go into that.

 

[Jonzjob]

Circuits & bumps are called con training, continuation training, and it's where the drivers get most of their experience.

The stress life of an aircraft is mainly based on the landings they do because that's where most of the stress is. If you compair the end of life flying hours of a civy aircraft to an R.A.F. jobbie you will find that the civy aircraft of the same age will have a lot of times more flying hours. They only land when they have to, i.e. at the end of a paying leg, but !! they don't have to go into unknown airfields at any time like the R.A.F. do.

You mentioned the Belslug, sorry Belfast Robbo. I was unfortunate enough to be a eleky on those abortions for 5 years at Brize. They were under powered with RR Tyne engines, could not do the inflight refuling they were supposed to do, couldn't do the heavy airdrops they were supposed to do and if the same committe that designed the camel to look good had been booted out from the Belfast design it would have looked very similar to the C17. I could go on, but?? The one good thing about them is that they were designed to fly around the world, in flight refuel and carry 2 complete crews. So under the cockpit is/was a nice little room with 6 very comfortable bunks in it and they were ideal for getting ones head down on quiet night shifts :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: So they weren't totally useless.

At the eastern, Bampton, end of the runway the only thing that used to seperate the runway from the Bampton road was a frangable fence (so that an aircraft could go through it with minimum damage), a narrow fotpath size strip of tarmec, a low curb and the road. I had just come off shift and had to go to Bampton for something and standing right on r=the center line were a complete family watching the landings. I stopped my very posh Ford Prefect (well it went anyway?) and caleed to the bloke that it wasn't safe to stand there. He got all stroppy and started on that just because I was in uniform with 3 stripes on my arm I couldn't boss him around and it was OK because they were quite high up when they went over. I asked him to count the wheels on the next Belslug, guess how far apart and to compair the number of skid marks aross the road between him and me and and the width of the nice new bot of frangible fence between him and the runway, and with a "good day sir" I drove off. As I went over the old railway bridge the other side of the airfield he was rushing everyone off of the center line. A few days before we had had a belslug undershoot because of a percular cloud formation that sometimes happens on that approach. The driver stuck the nose down to get out of it and only just managed to clear the 6 or so foot bank on the side of the road away from the runway. He left a 16 wheel skid mark across the road and took out the frangible fence as klean as a whistle :mrgreen: A tax disk appeared in the windscreen the next day :mrgreen:

The VC10 was a beautiful aircraft both to work on and to fly in. Yes, it was noisey and it left smoke behind it, but not as much as Concord, 707s and a load of other aircraft of its era. If it had been developed then it would have been as clean and quiet as any other aricraft of their time. I didn't spend as much time on the Bels as the 10s thank god, because only nine Bels were ever built and one of those went to Boscombe Down where they proved what a dog it is/was (hammer)

I loved my time in the R.A.F. and it was a very special job just being able to work on some of the most famous aircraft ever to fly, shame about the Belslug though :lol:

 

[Jonzjob]

Malcolm, that is low flying but have a look at this. These guys didn't have the benefit of terrain following radar. Exersize Red Flag, held each year in the Nevada desert and the Bucks pretty well always won. The only way our tarns Atlantic cousins could track them was by the dust trail they left. They could use missiles because the radar jobe were confused by the ground echo and the infra-red just couldn't find them that low. They got a lot lower than this video shows too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuYwOEF5xag

I was fortunate enough to be working at Kemble when the last U.K. flying Buckaneer was doing its flight testing before going off to South Africa. Not allowed to fly in the U.K. now because of the CAA ruling on the type. It is a fantastic and incredibley strong aircraft Shame the flying ones are all in SA now, as far as I know that is?

 

[RogerS]

Once upon a time we led the world in both military and civilian aircraft design and manufacture. Then the politicians got involved. Like bloody Harold Wilson who cancelled the TSR2. Prat.

And then, of course, we had 'traitors' like that pillock (lived in Cambridge, I think) who took it on himself to go round the world telling people about the sonic boom they would hear if Concorde flew overland. *******.