General "Ta" & a few random thoughts from Canada…

Just a very sincere ‘thank you’ to all those who’ve taken the trouble to share their pictures and impressions of Flying Legends (and East Fortune too!).

Although I’m in Canada, it’s nice to see what one is missing (Mustangs – Gee, thanks DB) and while I don’t agree with all the views expressed, it does give the rich mix that serves for interesting debate – keep talking folks!

Personally, I’d have most liked to see Mark Miller’s Dragon Rapide resto in the display, and G-AIDL a plane I was lucky enough to fly in from Biggin in 19.. cough cough… The Lockheed 12 would be a close second, and all those powerful fighters might merit a passing glance… Oh, I guess I might have gone, had I been in the country.

I wonder what Steve Patterson thought of it all. Hey, Steve, might I hazard a guess at: “It didn’t suck?”

It’s a great show – I admit to being jaundiced with it in past years due to over familiarity on my part and what I believed was an over repetative programe (which was “same as last year, add another ‘borrowed US a/c'” basically). You may disagree, but it’s my opinion.

I’m delighted that they’ve mixed it up a bit, added some non-fighter and non warbird types (some wives and families rightly have a suspicion about all the boys war toys…) and while the Balbo might not have been 30+ it’s still an achievement. As I’d said before, I understand one limitation is enough qualified DA holding pilots for the Balbo…

Carping over cost seems pointless. It was clearly three hours of quality entertainment and compared to the self-sheering-sheepfest that is the F1 joke (no, I’m not a fan) offers excellent value for money. Adding in marginal weather, crosswind (another edge for Old Warden, multi-directional runways there…!) and a lot of intense spanner and training time, that’s a bargain. And you don’t have to go.

Having seen the overwhelming response of a big group of Canadians (and visiting Yanks) seeing just ONE Spitfire do a couple of passes and a touch and go, at Rockliffe on Canada Day, as well as a similar level display at Point Cook in Australia, don’t take these riches for granted folks.

A big thank you to those that put on these shows, travel and work like stink, lay down money, sweat, invective and blood to make it happen.

And finally a big thank you to those that stopped it being a rather large formation of Swastika bedecked machines over Nuremberg. Moving away from such sad nationalism, a big nod to the fact that the Lufthansa Historic flight are welcome among a multi-national line up including Britons, French, Russians, Dutch and Americans (and I’m sure others – those are just from the nations I could SEE represented on the flightline). Aren’t we lucky.

I’ll try and share some sights from warm sunny Canada next week. Meantime, have a great rest of Legends folks!

Cheers / salut,