WW2 Weekend – East Fortune – 4/5 June

Cheers Mike 🙂

Taifun

Good to see the Pyros are still on form, do give my best to the team.

Hope to see you soon.

Don’t try this at home.

Jainie – are you being cheeky young lady?!?!?!? 🙂

Always!
That’s a great story Taifun. Thanks.

Quick question – does anyone know who owns the two Merlins that were on display, at least one of which was run up? I’ve seen one of them before (and heard it running), but can’t recall for the life of me who has it! :confused:

Robert – no, they didn’t, which is a pity as I think the Spitfire would have gone down well with the RAF re-enactors. In fact, I half thought about asking if I could borrow the gear so I could get a photo taken beside the Spit. I have a feeling they’d have escorted me to make sure all the bits came back! :p

(Or, if the organisers could have had the cash, they could have had Solent Sky’s Spit replica for people to sit in – perhaps next time?)

Taifun – no worries, mate. I shall look forward to it 🙂

I got a rather blurred shot of the ‘108 goving over the cloud of smoke, but that’s about it.

Had to laugh, because when one of the pyros went off, a little girl in the crowd was obviously not too enthusiastic about the big bangs!! :diablo:

Heres a couple of low quality pics of the big Cat taken on the Sunday.

Didnt manage to get any decent pics of the 108 as my battery on my SLR went dud and thinking I had a spare and didnt as the wife already used that one. Result one very annoyed Scotsman.

Cat pics were taken with a digital compact.

And the Cat in here new colour scheme was rather nice.

Glad you had a great time 😉 Anna 😀

Jainie – are you being cheeky young lady?!?!?!?

🙂

OK OK OK so the pyro’s on Sat were a little more exciting than usual.

It all started when Mr Nasty Local Farmer did a touch of “Get orf my land!” and wouldn’t let us dig holes for the pyros. I thought he was going to hit me when I eyed the big 100 acre field and asked what 5 sq ft of crop was worth. I wasn’t being lippy, I actually intended to buy the crop off him but he thought I was taking the piddle.

Anyway so we were forced to set up on the tarmac of the old runway where we can’t dig the hole we really need. Now the bomb is made using an explosive charge which lifts and ignites petrol which is in a bag sitting above it. Add a little cement powder to the top which gives the effect of white smoke.

Now I became paranoid about launching stones at Daz and the rest of the crowd (the very reason you dig the hole) so I placed a wall of tyres in front of the blast, at a good distance, to catch any flying debris.

Now, we placed a bin liner over the whole thing to stop it getting wet with the rain. This move sadly robbed us of the ability to see that one of the bags of petrol had leaked and mixed the cement powder into a thick porridge like substance which then didn’t launch properly. Instead it just ignited as a lump some of which landed on one of the tyres setting them off a treat. In the blink of an eye Hugh, Boo, Barney Mcgrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grub were in with the fire engine and doing their stuff.

In fact given another 3 minutes and mother nature would have put it out.

Anyway I was rightly read the riot act by the chief fire chief officer chief and had to promise not to do it again on Sunday…

I want to fly the plane from now on and let James do the messy booms and bangs.

I only got one of the after effects of the pyros – if they’d waited five minutes the rain would have done it for them!

Taifun:
A round of applause for the Catalina team and their generosity.

I wonder if anyone got pics of the ME108 pyros. It sounds like they were pretty exciting and way above your average display.

Daz,

We enjoyed the weekend and I’m sorry we didn’t get to meet. Next time…

Taifun

Jainie,

Thank God I got the ride with the fantastic Catalina (thanks again lads if you’re reading this!!).

After all the weather problems on Sat (the aircraft got stuck in Fife after uploading fuel and then had to scud run to Edinburgh) the trip home was no less traumatic. James and Stuart had to make another weather diversion ending up at Teeside. After staying the night in the airport hotel they headed for Southampton early this morning but again had to weather divert to Oxford, finally arriving home at about 11.

James and Stuart are both commercial pilots and were both due in the sim this morning at 9. Ooops…

🙂

Thanks again

Thanks Daz.

Did the Museum put any aircraft outside to make the WW11 weekend seem more like an active airfield. The Auster AOP V would have been quite appropriate.

Just about! :p

Daz: Did you get any pics of the Yak11?

Yep – EF was like that. Flash of lightning and a crash of thunder, and every bugger disappeared into the shop! (or at least it felt like that!)

Is it just me, or is there something about seeing a Buchon under a grey sky that makes it even more…. malevolent?! 🙂

Nice one Daz – here’s one for you – this was wet Breighton on Sunday!

No problem, davski. They were probably right to turn back, anyway – check out my pic of the Mustang on page one! 😮

I left about the same time too. It was going to be another 35 minutes til the Cat was due to arrive. Overheard that RACo’s Hurricane and Mustang turned back around Newcastle because of the weather.

On Saturday the Mustang and Hurricane managed to get quite a bit further than Newcastle with the cloud base getting lower and lower… reluctantly Tony and Brian opted to return to Breighton. On Sunday the conditions at Breighton deteriorated at about 1300 and didn’t improve until about 1530/1600 so the trip was scratched once more – sorry to everyone who had hoped to see us display – roll on summer!