Warbirds Had Their Best Days???

Certainly since I’ve been going to East Fortune air shows, there doesn’t seem to be a huge variety, but now and then they do surprise and delight. First show I went to was in ’96, and there was the Plane Sailing Catalina, then ’98 had the Spitfire and Buchon from OFMC, then ’99 had the Buchon and P-40, again from OFMC, and 2000 finally had the BBMF appearing and the Blenheim, I seem to recall. 2001 also had Spit T.IX PT462.

The ’99 PFA Rally had Mark Hanna and the OFMC Mustang, and the 2000 Rally had the T-28/Fennec from Duxford, too.

Apart from that, it’s mainly locally-based (or Scotland-based) aircraft. Maybe they just don’t have the money or the desire to pull in other ‘acts’, but I would love to see more variety there.

My feeling is that Warbids have had their best days in terms of variety. I can see the future being made up of a number of smaller collectors such as Rob Davies, Peter Teichman, Maurice Hammond etc having a much smaller number of machines than the likes of TFC etc and flying them mainly for pure enjoyment as well as shows. This however is likely to mean more duplication on the circuit rather than the struggle to get more and more exotic types built and registered.
I would very much like to be proved wrong and another arge scale collector set up in the UK but I’m not sure that will happen. I plan to savour my memories of the variety of 10 years ago and enjoy what we have today and hope it continues for the future.

Yes, OW is lovely.
But they have the same planes more or less every show.

I second that one !

Distant flight-line axis are the real culprit, a Spitfire or Mustang coming round the Superhangar, top view in your face was a real buzz. These days the displays are so far away, I havent taken a single picture this year except when the a/c was landing on the grass. Surely if the aircraft’s trajectory is away from the crowd and the low pass is non aerobatic they can come as close as they used to?