Those Magnificent Men and their Flying Machines
Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2008 9:13 am
Humble apologies if we already have a thread covering this subject.
Now and again we talk of Chinooks and other strange visitors to our skies. Mostly we're blessed with small airliners crawling in and out of Glasgow Airport and I would suppose most of you, like me, hardly notice them.
As a child, I grew up close to the naval air station at Yeovilton in Somerset and my dad used to take me and my brothers to the air show there every year. Some of my earliest memories are of the childish excitememt that precedes such a day out. The Navy have been beating people up for centuries and their end-of-show "battle" is one of life's true delights. Forget bonfire night, these boys and girls really know how to make a statement with pyrotechnics. They have Sea Harriers to play with, too.
Glasgow, like all large cities in the UK, has no military aircraft bases close by, for safety reasons and the need to keep civilian traffic flowing. It's not so far to Leuchars, though.
I've not been there yet, though I know from Google maps that they have an old Lightning parked out the back, well worth looking out in itself, if you're not entranced by the Eurofighter Typhoon.
From the archives then, and let's get this show in the air, a BAC Lightning F6 taking to the skies in a dreadful hurry, late morning, at the International Air Tattoo, 1983. If you were there, you won't forget the determined display that this pilot put on. He pulled off the deck, flipped it, put it back upright and then pulled the stick back before disappearing to the blue yonder, counting off the thousands as he did so. The Lightning is good enough for 77,000 feet. Can't do that in an F-16.
I was only fifteen at the time and still learning how to drive my Olympus OM-10 which is why the imagery doesn't quite match my latest. Nonetheless enjoy a small slice of history. Just wish I could make the noises to go with it.
Now and again we talk of Chinooks and other strange visitors to our skies. Mostly we're blessed with small airliners crawling in and out of Glasgow Airport and I would suppose most of you, like me, hardly notice them.
As a child, I grew up close to the naval air station at Yeovilton in Somerset and my dad used to take me and my brothers to the air show there every year. Some of my earliest memories are of the childish excitememt that precedes such a day out. The Navy have been beating people up for centuries and their end-of-show "battle" is one of life's true delights. Forget bonfire night, these boys and girls really know how to make a statement with pyrotechnics. They have Sea Harriers to play with, too.
Glasgow, like all large cities in the UK, has no military aircraft bases close by, for safety reasons and the need to keep civilian traffic flowing. It's not so far to Leuchars, though.
I've not been there yet, though I know from Google maps that they have an old Lightning parked out the back, well worth looking out in itself, if you're not entranced by the Eurofighter Typhoon.
From the archives then, and let's get this show in the air, a BAC Lightning F6 taking to the skies in a dreadful hurry, late morning, at the International Air Tattoo, 1983. If you were there, you won't forget the determined display that this pilot put on. He pulled off the deck, flipped it, put it back upright and then pulled the stick back before disappearing to the blue yonder, counting off the thousands as he did so. The Lightning is good enough for 77,000 feet. Can't do that in an F-16.
I was only fifteen at the time and still learning how to drive my Olympus OM-10 which is why the imagery doesn't quite match my latest. Nonetheless enjoy a small slice of history. Just wish I could make the noises to go with it.