PART 1
I was up at some stupid hour of the day in Suffolk with a beautiful sunrise and set off towards Waddington, I arrived at wave at just after 0700 as I thought the place would be fairly busy with people to watch the Nimrods final flight with the RAF.
First up out of the murk was E-3 ZH103 taking off into the very low cloud;
A passing tug;
Then the Nimrod;
Nimrod takeoff;
The crowdline!;
After a little wait she appeared to do a few passes;
Third pass;
Farewell over the WAVE;
Managed to catch the strobe on;
Back on the gound;
Then the Yanks arrived, first up a Dover AFB C-17, callsign ‘Thunderbird 14’;
Followed by the Thunderbirds. First up, no number on this one;
Thunderbird 8;
Thunderbird 8 again;
Thunderbird 6;
Thunderbird 2 was the last to land;
By: roberto_yeager - 3rd July 2011 at 18:43
Very sad day… but great shots!
1Saludo
By: AdlerTag - 1st July 2011 at 12:45
Servo tab ‘floating’ control surfaces were also used on the Bristol Britannia, and if I remember rightly the system was used on all the control surfaces and not just the elavators.
By: pagen01 - 1st July 2011 at 09:12
Boeing and Douglas (think they were the first) have been using the control or servo tab ‘lazy elevators’ system for a long time.
By: REF - 1st July 2011 at 02:15
Thanks for the comments folks, and for the explanation of the elevators – I did wonder what was going on with them.
By: wiseman - 1st July 2011 at 00:56
Very nice shots.
Thanks for sharing.
By: vulcan118 - 30th June 2011 at 19:12
anyone know whats coming into waddington tomorrow, i heard t-birds are displaying
By: XH668 - 30th June 2011 at 19:09
oh so its not a BN Defender
No.
By: vulcan118 - 30th June 2011 at 18:49
oh so its not a BN Defender
By: AdlerTag - 30th June 2011 at 18:39
It’s basically a Beech Super King Air, kitted out with all kinds of electronic surveillence gear. The RAF calls them Beechcraft Shadow R.1’s.
By: vulcan118 - 30th June 2011 at 18:21
whats the first plane in part 2?
By: Flatcat - 30th June 2011 at 11:39
It’s true. You DO learn something new every day (IF YOU CHOOSE TO)
I’ve worked on the 146/RJ servo tab system so understand the mechanics, and on 73/74/76 and just assumed that all of Boeings 7 series had been powered flight controls.
By: J31/32 - 30th June 2011 at 10:52
Some Boeings elevator tabs change from anti-balance to balance dependant on flap config but not sure what would cause the elevator differential here.
edit: the answer is revelaed in the link below
By: Flatcat - 30th June 2011 at 03:49
Whats with the mismatch on the elevators? Are these balance tab controlled? I didn’t realise that Boeing had that in their repertoire.
By: Blue_2 - 29th June 2011 at 16:36
Very nice shots, but a very sad occasion 🙁
By: Flygirl - 29th June 2011 at 16:12
Great shots.
By: Steve Bond - 29th June 2011 at 16:09
Nice to see Wave has got the decorators in, with all those step ladders
By: REF - 29th June 2011 at 16:08
PART 2
Despite going back to the car when this landed causing me to miss it, then I missed it being towed out but managed after a sprint from the car to get this as it was being towed back, not seen one before so it was good to catch it;
No trip to Waddington is the same without a photo of the Vulcan;
Then a McCord AFB C-17, callsign ‘Thunderbird 15’ arrived;
E-3 ZH103 returning;
The the RC-135 taxied out;
And backtracked down the runway;
And took off;
Climbing away from the runway;
It was a great day, cold and wet in places but it was brilliant to be there. I grew up watching the Nimrod at airshows and I wanted to see the last flight. I know my photos are not as good as some one here but I hope you all enjoy them.
Thanks to Warren, Steve, Jim, Doug, Craig and all the others for some great company and good banter through out the day.
The rest of my photos are on my website ere;
http://www.ukairfields.org.uk/wad-nimrod.html
Thanks for looking
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June 29, 2011 at 4:07 pm