I learnt to fly at Biggin Hill a few years back and as Mark mentioned, there's something quite exciting about seeing a Spitfire screaming over an airfield... I'm surprised they didn't have the Lancaster there altho if my memory serves me correct, I think last weekend was also Armed Forces Day in the UK.
Anyway, turns out the significant other lives a half hour from Osh and conveniently enough, I'm heading over that way just in time for it.... Roll on a big Airshow I say!!!! On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 12:24 AM, Mark Langford <n5...@hiwaay.net> wrote: > NetHeads, > > Biggin Hill "Air Fair" was this weekend. It's an old RAF Spitfire base that > I was half expecting to be a quaint grass strip with a bunch of Spitfires on > hand, but it turned out to be a thriving corporate jet kind of place with > several runways instead. I guess I'm spoiled by Oshkosh and Sun N Fun, but > the planes were kept well away from visitors, and if you think OSH is too > "commercial", you have no idea how commercial it can get. I only saw a > couple of experimental airplanes there, and they were basically Bleirot > replicas on display for a cosmetic company. > > One reason I went was to buy a few metric nuts and bolts from what I > figured would be a few vendors of those kind of things, but no such luck. > The only real airplane parts I saw was one vendor selling instruments from > old military aircraft (what's a "power loss meter", anyway?). The majority > of vendors were selling hamburgers, chips, and ice cream, and a huge > proportion were inflatable kiddie attractions. It was a trifle > disappointing. > > As for old warbirds, there were several, but the most notable were an > ME-109, three Spitfires, a P-51, and a Vulcan bomber. I couldn't stand to > stay around long enough to see the Vulcan, but I got to see it later, oddly > enough. I was back at the farmhouse when I heard this roar approaching, and > looked out just in time to see the Vulcan thundering overhead at maybe a > thousand feet, headed from Biggin Hill (an hour and a half's drive away) to > it's home base. What are the chances of me being directly under the flight > path? > > There was also a worthwhile micro version of the Popham airfield antique > car show, with a few more cars I'd never heard of before. Below are some > links to the few flying photos that I took. > > http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/andover/090627238.jpg is an ME-109. > http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/andover/090627268.jpg is the Spitfire > that opened the show. Carolyn Grace did some aerobatics in it just to kick > the "flying display" off. > http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/andover/090627285.jpg > http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/andover/090627300.jpg > It's a beautiful airplane, and it was great to be able to stand there and > see a Spitfire fly doing ten or twelve flybys intertwined with aerobatics, > at one of the very fields where they flew from during WWII. That alone made > it worth the visit. You can't escape the history of this place. There are > former RAF fields just about everywhere. The book vendors were full of > books detailing accounts of various war stories as told by the guys who'd > been there and done that. I have a couple of books that Mac Wood gave me to > read, and so far, they are quite spellbinding. > > For more on Carolyn Grace and her Spitfire, see > http://www.ml407.co.uk/pages/ ... > > Mark Langford > N56ML "at" hiwaay.net > website at http://www.N56ML.com <http://www.n56ml.com/> > > -------------------------------------------------------- > _______________________________________ > Search the KRnet Archives at http://www.maddyhome.com/krsrch/index.jsp > to UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to krnet-le...@mylist.net > please see other KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html > -- "Though I Fly Through the Valley of Death ... I Shall Fear No Evil. For I am at 80,000 Feet and Climbing." - At the entrance to the old SR-71 operating base Kadena, Japan
