As the 2023 season draws to an end.

In a year that was meant to be one of doom with less and less money free to spend it is nice to have seen a fairly stable season with some nice gems ready to tempt people for next year. 

Agreed Rob. obviously the CAA have brought in restrictions that as yet the FAA have not.

I dont do airshows anymore for the same reason but hopefully get to see the Temp and P3966 fly.

Personally I have been pretty bored with UK airshows for several years. Don’t like the seaside shows, I want to be on an active air field. Displays continue to be distant and samey IMHO. This year I went to Oshkosh and it was simply on another planet. Not just the flying display, that is a small element but the whole event was awsome. The sort of access that UK enthuiasts can only dream of. I know most spectators there are ‘airplane people’ but there is no crowd barrier, only cones and tape combo were around the USAF/USN fighters, you can stand next to a P-47 as it starts up and taxies out, it restored my interest in airshows, but only with the desire to go there every year! In the UK I much perfer the fly-in type events to the big airshows, just wish there were more vintage events. We used to have the Great Vintage Flying Weekend and Moth rallies now its all a shadow of those days sadly. 

Rob

Prop Strike. what an excellent post. Thank you. I noticed the forum has a little more bounce lately and I do know its principles for some not to come back. Just a shame there are not view counts as I think that would help boost interest even more form us posters.

I really hope P3966 takes to the sky in 2024, cant wait to see and hear the Tempest.

Wait n see should be some good news in ‘24! 
 

meantimes well done to those who try and keep this forum alive , sad shadow of its former self that it is 

Yes, I think it has been a pretty good year, and the Tempest flight yesterday reminds us that there are still treats and treasures waiting to emerge in the coming months and years, the Percival Q6, for instance, and the Walrus , a rake of Seafires and plenty more.

The display scene is much reduced from decades past, with very little RAF support, but then we have very little RAF.  Astonishing to remember years past when most RAF stations would host an ‘At Home’ display once a year.   But what we have, is still pretty good, and the epicentre of the scene is the Duxford/Old Warden hub. It is a shame for the rest of the country that they are just 15 miles apart, which leaves many regions a display wasteland. 

There are certainly great spectacles to experience, for instance standing on the fenceline at DX in September when eighteen (total)  Spits + Hurricanes split the air with high power run ups, before blasting off in flights of three or four, just amazing!

We have enjoyed a pretty safe period, including this year, though the season has one more display event.  Since the trauma of Shoreham in 2015, no lives have been lost in UK air display activities, though there were two close calls, both ditchings, a Turbulent and a Stearman. The scene is well regulated, but more importantly the participants effectively self-police, and take the task very seriously. The era of Don Bullock and Jeff Hawke brushing the grass in B-17s and Mitchells is long gone. The recent T28 rolling to destruction in Hungary reminds us that opportunities to crash an aircraft are never far away, once recklessness and bravado come to the fore.

It is pleasing to see the forum picking up, it was on life support for a while, but a small core of posters kept enough activity going that people felt it still worth checking in just to see what is going on, and hopefully that momentum will continue and grow. I see it particularly as a sort of ‘clearing house’ for news and happenings, harvesting stuff from many sources and gathering it in a single ‘go to’  location.  I have not learnt to love the design of the forum, the fonts and the colours, but I guess like most things, you end up getting used to it. As in the Kubler Ross model, I have worked through anger, bargaining and depression, and at last have reached ‘acceptance’ !