Duxford to ban aerobatics???

Janie,
Thanks for the tip, but having worked (a few years ago I might add) with one 1950s trained FAA phot and another who trained in the 70s I fear that it has taken me this long to forget them! Lets put it this way; the drunkenly sung taunt ‘Sing, sing, or show us your ring…’ still haunts me, as does something about a handsome young matelot with the Captains ‘unbroken’ daughter on a trip around the harbour… (Made the Good Ship Venus sound like something suitable to be sung in church if I remember rightly!) Good blokes though, and very tolerant of my ‘amateur’ drinking skills right up until the point, usually the following morning, when I reminded them of what they had been doing!
Maybe I will give it a look though.

Alright, I give in. I don’t eat chocolate; it has always tasted far too sweet and cloying to me, but I just remember something like a coated flake sold in packets of two that I thought were called Taxis – and it suited the punchline, which now looks rather lame on reflection. I would raise the subject with my girlfriend (who is more familiar with such confectionary) but fear that she would imply that I am saying she is gorging on chocolate and getting fat – and I really don’t need that! (Anyone know how to raise an innocent question with a female so that it does not get turned around into you criticising their size or eating habits?)

Aerobatics? (Got it sorted! Hoorah.) Afraid it was all over my head anyway. Tee hee.

Flood.

Flood

Good to have you back. I see you have a passion for the FAA. Can I recommend to you a book I purchased at the FAA/RNAS stand at Duxford this weekend call the Fleet Air Arm Song Book. I don’t think us girlies were supposed to see it as it is full of marvellously bawdy songs, mainly parodys. I think it tells you more about the FAA than any history book could! If nothing else beg, steal or borrow a copy of “The A25 song”. The dear chap on the stand even serenaded me with it – hysterical.

I’m sure Yak 11 Fan won’t mind me answering on his behalf, but I can tell you Taxis are individually wrapped “two thick layers of smooth caramel with rich chocolate cream and crisp wafer covered in milk chocolate”. My father used to be the company salesman for them a few years after he finished bombing Germany.

What happened to the discussion on aerobatics?

Janie,

I type to you from the comfort of my hospital bed, having tried out the “Look right, look left, look right again…” theory in the local high street and find that you are correct – the Doctors say that I should be out and about by Christmas!
Sorry, been having problems with the connection (“Connect with Broadband” they say but they never tell you that can’t get on the poxy thing in the evenings once the kids are back at school and the band width is occupied with brats trying to download pop videos, or something).

My recollection for the airman walking into a propeller was of a multi-houred Fleet Air Arm pilot who apparently got out of a Mosquito, possibly at RNAS Ford in the post-war period, and walked into the still turning prop. I do not know which way the pilot turned nor which set of blades he walked into but I do know that, despite the stories of miraculous survival from similar stunts, on this occasion this gentleman died. The information was recalled from a large collection of airfield safety pamphlets/posters/booklets etc borrowed from an elderly gentleman about 10 years ago in connection with my having to copy some of the crash photos and cartoons. Mostly it was just basic stuff like “always remember to check that the flight deck is not in use before embarking on physical training exercises” – complete with a drawing showing what could happen if you tried to do star jumps whilst an early helicopter was warming up, but there were a few such horror stories thrown in too. A former colleague then lightened the day, as I recall, by telling us of having to take photos of a Wyvern pilots body after his aircraft flipped over on landing and slid to a halt on concrete, wearing down the crush bar and causing his head to become a smear the length of the accident… I have great respect for air accident photographers.

Yak 11 Fan,

If I remember rightly Taxis came in twos – hence the Twix like comment. Maybe they should have appropriately called it Bus? Anyway it is something the girlfriend insists she never eats so they must be my wrappers that are on the floor in her car, do you think?

Flood.

Flood, me old wordsmith. Do you live in England? If you do, do not cross the road until you have read the following!!

Look RIGHT, look LEFT, then RIGHT again. Your method only works on the continent. 😀

Originally posted by Flood

Like the idea of banning taxis! (Bit like Twix weren’t they?)

Nah Taxis were dry old chocolate covered wafer things

Digby, Isn’t that what condoms are for?? 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

Talking about accidents I swerved to avoid a child the other day and fell out of bed:D 😀 😀 😀

Maybe they should ban taxiing. There are far more taxiing accidents than aero accidents.

To ban Aeros from Duxford would be Crazy and senseless?:confused: 😡

Could we also ban aerobics at Duxford, very dangerous. I think that was what Ted Inman meant. I certainly haven’t seen anyone on the live side at DX participating in aerobics since Ted’s statement. It is also part of standing orders now …no aerobics near the crowd line.

Similar all visiting aircraft, any sign of aerobics and your leotard will be confiscated.

Any further debate on this will definately be fruitless.:o

Ted only made a brief passing comment to a local newspaper. He did not make any official statement and suddenly it’s turned into a massive debate. I think you’d all be better off just forgetting all about it. Debate is always healthy, but in this instance it is truly futile.

Flood: Please 🙂 try to use the term AERObatics not ACRObatics. Aerobatics are with aeroplanes, acrobatics are with acrobats (people without aeroplanes). Now I’d be happy to see acrobatics banned, but never aerobatics. 😀

No reply from Duxford

Just a quick note to say that Duxford have not replied to my e-mail of the 20th August asking them to clarify what their position is over aerobatics at future airshows.

It is a great shame that they cannot take the time to communicate with the people who support and visit their museum. I can’t say it surprises me though.

Very Best Regards

Jason

Got a neighbour like that – if he sees me returning from a show he asks if I got the crash. Sickening.
Anyway statistics will obviously state that if it hasn’t happened yet it is going to, and since it has been over 50 years since the last time then we must be due something sometime (shudder). Not that I want a crash to happen – we must surely have been extremely lucky up until now – but a mistake only has to happen once and all those built up no-claims bonus’s will mean nothing.

Nermal

Sean,
No problem.
I only asked because everyone seemed to think that it was straight out of the IWM guys mouth and nobody made any provision for ‘other factors’.
I mentioned Ramstein because – if I remember rightly – so many people were killed or injured and it all was flashed up on every TV news bulletin (sound familiar?). The imagery was so emotive that in the aftermath an order was made (I believe) that the displaying pilots should never fly toward the crowd – and this order was made in Britain as well as Germany (and probably all over Europe and/or the world). You are never going to convince me that none of our teams wouldn’t have flown a routine like the Frecce Tricolori’s because someone’d had such foresight! Just about every order concerning air safety – usually with the exception of the bleedin’ obvious, of course – is issued in hindsight.
Of course the fact that neither incident happened in Britain did not escape me (can you honestly say that no spectator will ever again be killed at a British air show, ever?), the point was that sensational film of an accident is flashed all over the world (The good old global village – hence my neighbour thinking the Ukraine incident had happened at Fairford until I put him right!) and only goes against display flying as a whole. Publicity about displays works both ways – it can encourage people to go to air shows (like Shoreham instead of the Bognor Birdman this weekend) or it can remind them that sometimes things do go wrong and repeat the accident footage several times a bulletin together with similar previous footage. Going back to my neighbour he remembers Paris only because of all the accidents that have occurred there, and I suppose if I pressed him further he might have a prejudice against Russian aircraft built from this. He is a carpenter, but the guy a couple of doors down might be in insurance – and they are both members of the public, just like you or I. Why shouldn’t insurance assessors (or whatever they are) have prejudices built on their perceived knowledge gained via popular media sources? The thing about dramatic TV imagery is that it shows you what actually happened – no amount of diagrams or publishable after accident photography is going to do that – and it will show the shock and horror in peoples eyes. Remember the guy videoing as the fireball can towards him at Ramstein? In this day and age his next of kin can also gain damages for (um, can’t remember the word, something like quality of life but to do with what his family thought might be going through his mind just before he died) as well as the physically injured and the mentally injured – and the emergency services etc. I just thought that an insurance company might try to cover itself as much as it could. That’s all.
Anyway, if it isn’t the insurance then what about the council? Local government always takes a contrary viewpoint to us so maybe they have enquired if flying could still take place with out acrobatics. If not the council then maybe the police, farmers union, the Duxford neighbourhood watch, or the local Rotarians. There is always going to be people who don’t want to have noisy things disturbing their afternoons in the garden so maybe someone has got a solicitor in to look at the airfields operating licence, etc.
I don’t know – I am just adding to the debate!

Flood. (Sorry if this sounds like a bit of a ramble but I keep losing the poxy connection, then I look at my diatribe and find something more to add, then I reconnect and lose the connection again. Curse you AOL. I repeat, sorry)

Flood – I’d like to respond to your insurance point
“Why has nobody mentioned insurance yet?”

In general, I believe insurance companies don’t react to dramatic tv pix – they work on statistics and likely risk. On that basis, the public liability cover for an air show should be a reasonable risk for an insurance company, just because of the comparatively low rate of injury. But the problem is, air show cover is classed as part of the normal aviation insurance cover that applies to the rest of the aviation world. Hence the cost has risen dramatically since 9/11. Which is totally illogical, because 9/11 could reasonably be said to have had zero effect on the risks of air shows. But that’s how the insurance companies work. Many air shows are suffering horrendously because of this.

There is a separate point about insurance cover for individual aircraft – and the number of fatalities clearly has an effect on that. But once again, I don’t think the perceived risk is much affected by tv pictures.

Also, you say
“…remembering Ramstein or that Russian one (In the Ukraine? Last year, year before?…”

Well, the point about Ramstein and the Ukraine crash of the Su-27 (Jul 2002) was that they didn’t happen in Britain. I suggest that, with the safety régime we now have in this country, it would be very unlikely that either of those accidents could happen in the same way at an air show here.

David Burke – i was merely responding to your earlier point
“as the paying public we have the right to have the event conducted in a way that both safeguards the public against unnecessary risk and gives the pilots a margin for error”
I suggest that the safety record does show that the public is protected – at Duxford and all other British air shows. Compare that with other outdoor spectator activities in Britain – football and motorsport to name but two – where spectators have certainly been killed in recent years.

Also, in your reply, you say
“some manouvers carried out at low level if unsuccesful can leave a pilot with little or no influence in where the aircraft is going”
– that’s true, but the more recent regulations are desgned to try and prevent such an aircraft crashing into, or near, the crowd by forbidding some manoeuvres that have an ‘on-crowd vector’. That’s where flying control committees come in. It’s they who have to ensure that the regulations are carried out.

I too was introduced to aeros in the back of a chippy (lovely little machine) as a cadet and have always appreciated the skills of the pilots who manage to make it look so easy but if aeros were banned it wouldn’t stop me from going to airshows

My point (screams of ‘oh no, don’t let him at the keyboard’ ring out from across the land) was that Aerobatics are lovely (if I didn’t make that clear then I am sorry, but if you read it again it still won’t give you that impression!) BUT they always seem to be over shadowed by whatever happens before, during, and after – especially in the eyes of the non enthusiast show goers (i.e. 90%+ of the spectators).

“Mum! Look at that plane! He goes up, then he comes down! Look at the smoke! He’s fantastic! When I grow up I wanna be an aero-acrobatman pilot and fly upside down everywhere! Neeeeyow!’

‘That’s nice Colin. Would you like an ice cream before another noisy one comes along?’

‘YES PLEASE! I love icescream! When I grow up I wanna be an icescream man and then I can have icescream all day long!’
‘Well tell your father to stop ogling the Utterly Butterly girls and see if he wants one too.’

‘YEAH! When I grow up I wanna be an Utterly Butterly girl and get ogled by all those men at the front on ladders…’
Or something.

Oh yes. Acrobatics.
Sorry but they are small and they are far away. Yes, they are much better in an intimate setting but most air shows are not intimate – they can’t be.
Go to a big air show and you will find that the tiny little aerobat just doesn’t have any presence – Fairford always gave the impression that the Extras et al were having their own display up the other end, even if they were in front of you. And with the rules and regulations brought in after Ramstein (probably) their display almost always seems to be held for the benefit of those on the far side all the time. I have had people ask me where it is now because there is an awful lot of sky up there and they are tiny little ‘planes (‘Ask that man with the big lens!’). Others have visibly used this display time like they would use the advertising break when watching TV at home – to visit the toilets or take on provisions.
All joking apart if you are a seasoned air show goer you used to be able to do certain things depending on what was flying – get a position at the front when the aerobatics were on, get an ice cream/burger/or visit the more usually packed book or model stall when the big and noisy things were displaying, and get a good position in the exit queue if the Red Arrows were displaying at the end – no offence but I think I saw them 12 times in one season (that is probably a two and a half to three month period for me) and you can only take so much of the commentators ‘And now here’s one for the ladies!’ banter.

Acrobatics; I have the greatest respect for the pilots flying them, the designers for making something that looks so flimsy but is able to be thrown around the sky like that, and even for the backers who take a chance and sponsor them when people like me just bad mouth their efforts. Joe Public would rather, I fear, that they were about the size of a Hercules and sounded like an F16 with the throttle full open.

And now the cop out.
I have flown acrobatics – Flight Simulator 2002 right under the Eiffel Tower!
In reality I found that I liked the ground where it was when the pilot did a pylon turn over a Radio One roadshow several years ago in a (Grumman) Tiger – and I threatened to dump the NATO standard sickbag (unissued, but it still smelled as though it been recycled a few times!) out over the crowd. The day was not a complete loss since they tried to close the runway on our return due to the high crosswind – which the pilot said (wink) he didn’t hear – and so I got a real good close-up of the tarmac when the port wing dropped nearly 90 degrees (‘Gosh! Look at those people – they look just like ants!’ ‘They are ants, laddie! Think we’ll go around again!’); result, I got the chance to fill a second bag!

Flood.

‘But Dad! I wanna watch the Red Darrows! When I grow up I wanna be a Red Darrow Hawk fighter pilot man and give everyone a shock by flying up behind them when they don’t know I’m there!’

‘Shut up, son. That bloke wrote that it’s easier to get out when they are flying, so we’ll only have to queue for three hours instead of six.’

‘Does your eye hurt Dad? Why did Mum hit you when she saw what you were videoing?’

‘Shut up, son. When we get home I’m going to change to Stork margarine…’

I’m sure Flood can answer for himself, but I’m not entirely sure that he actually said he didn’t enjoy watching aerobatics per se. I’m only typing this because I’m in much the same position – once you’ve seen a display as part of a smaller, more intimate audience, the displays done for the general public almost lose their interest, because you’ve got better memories of it.

If that’s not what Flood was getting at, I apologise both to him and you, but it’s certainly how I’ve interpreted the comments. 🙂

As for flying aeros, I fully agree with you. My first aeros were twenty years ago as a little Air Cadet in the back of a Chippy, and that’s how I got the bug. One day (soon, hopefully), I’ll be able to do them myself. But even though I don’t (can’t) yet, I still enjoy the shows I go to watch.

But maybe some of it is down to the size of the show, as I’ve said above. I watched Big Beautiful Doll at Legends, but it didn’t really do much for me. Not because I didn’t appreciate the way Rob flew her, but purely because I was walking past the hedge at Gransden when he brought her in to land after Children In Need a few years back. That beautiful aeroplane (and she really is aptly named), gently whistling past with those exhaust stubs quietly crackling away about 30 feet above the hedge, to settle on the same grass strip that I’ve flown Cessna 150’s out of. That’s a very, very special memory for me, and nothing else will ever come close. Apart from a circuit in the back seat of course. But now I really am in dreamland. 😀

Flood

You really should try flying aeros. It will make a lot of difference to the way you see things. It’s a bit like saying fun-fair rides are not that much fun to watch, but to ride them or design them is quite different. Get involved! Then you can enjoy the WHOLE airshow.