RIAT

[Dando]

well my bag is packed and ready for a lunch time departure to RAF Fairford for the Royal International Air Tattoo and for what could be the last UK flight of the awesome Avro Vulcan.

According to our friends, who we are staying with, the typhoons are already there along apache's, Chinooks and the C17's.

I hope the weather is nice so we can see plenty

 

[Tashyboy]

Talking to a guy today who is doing some sound recordings of Colliers. Anyway As a kid his dad who got injured in the pits in the late 1930's worked for Rolls Royce at Hucknall.He was telling me a story where a Vulcan Bomber had a rolls Royce engine bolted to the bottom of the plane. The Vulcan took off under its own steam and switched power to the Rolls Royce engine and flew down to Gibralter. Turned round and two and an half hours later flew back to Hucknall.
The Rolls Royce engine had to get 10,000 hrs under its belt and is the pre curser to one of the present day rolls engines.
anyway 30 yr later he was doin a photo workshop in the Lake District and in this class was a ex RAF pilot who was a test pilot in later years. Who flew Vulcans out of Hucknall. This guy then explained what the pilot did and why, and the pilot was gobsmacked. The pilot said that after thousands of hours of boring flying they used to look forward to seeing scrawny arsed kids at the end of the runway.
this guy said the runway was only just long enough for the Vulcan and it used to come in 50 ft above there heads and the ground would shake.
ah the memories of the old uns.

PS, when I worked at Harworth Colliery which is about 3-4 miles south of Finningly (Doncaster Robin Hood airport). Every year the air show was on. This particular Saturday the pit top was deserted and I asked where everyone was. Up No1 tower was the reply ( a massive concrete monstrous pit headstock due to be demolished within the year).
so up I go and there's a dozen lads watching the show from the best seat in the house 200 ft above ground level. Apparently the pilots used the tower as a landmark. Two tornados went by and they were that close you could see the pilot had not cleaned his teeth. Then a Vulcan went by as slow as you could imagine and the sound was immense. Happy days.