Abingdon '90 (12 pix for Ant)

Abingdon 90 – I remember it well – the only air show where the traffic was so bad we were turned away as we came off the A34 and the engine of the car I had borrowed seized up and cost me 400 *********** quid to repair. The traffic actually seemed worse than the Greenham Common airshow queue back in the eighties (19 miles on the A34 according to the police), I cant remember the year but it was meant to have been held at Bristol (Bristol Aviation Festival??) but was changed to Greenham.

Originally posted by Ant Harrington

Cheers for the Spit piccy Melvyn,which one was this?I remember there was a big collection of Airfix models displayed on a stall beside it.

The BBMF Mark IX in the early stages of its rebuild. It was next to the Spitfire Society stand as I remember and I remember Lettice Curtis there.

Somewhere I have some half decent pics of the flying but I am too tired to go look for them.

I also had a pic of the tyres smoking on the Mig21 when it had arrived a little while before.

Had a very interesting chat to a Czech guy there about being sacked from all his jobs because he supported the 1968 uprising. He started as a professor and ended up selling papers at Prague station. Even then secret police would stop people buying them and he told me “that was when I realised they could never win”. I was gobsmacked and asked him what he meant and he said “I realised they couldn’t find two policemen for everyone that disagreed with the system”.

That man had cohones the size of melons. How you stay sane and keep up hope when all you have to keep you going is a theory like that is beyond me.

Even now, fourteen years later, I am still in awe of him.

MH

This is the Mig-21, ‘1304’ in Czech markings. Was it not donated to the RAF Benevolent Fund by the Czechs to be sold to raise funds?

Thanks Geoff,brilliant pics.I remember seeing the Harvard and insisting it was a Brewster Buffalo untill I actually read the notice in front of it-whoops :D.
I remember the Lizzie and the Spitfire VIII aswell,although some of the others are a bit of a surprise to me-I’d have thought I’d have noticed the MB Meteor and the specially marked Bucc!
Cheers for the Spit piccy Melvyn,which one was this?I remember there was a big collection of Airfix models displayed on a stall beside it.
I seem to remember there was a static MiG 21 in one of the hangars aswell,it was said to be the first of it’s type to be seen in the UK.Any ideas which one this was or what became of it??

The traffic at this one was a complete Hen-up. I even complained to the chief constable of Oxfordshire who wrote back and told me they were not expecting crowds and he thought they had coped well. I wrote back and told him that they were a joke and that any idiot could have forseen crowds with that flypast and on that day. I also suggested they should have turned the airfield into a roundabout, with local one-way traffic as was done at malling and that worked well. He eventually wrote back and admitted they had made mistakes!

I remember this was there too!

FT375

XW352

XS793

XX894

Forgot to note the s/n of this one 🙁

WL419

XK895/G-SDEV

VP955/G-DVON

XW635/G-AWSW

2442/OO-SOT

MT719/G-VIII