It was quite poigniant watching the T-Bird depart today, the Thursday before the Jersey airshow. A number of years ago I stood on the same spot outside the hangar at Duxford, on the same Thursday and watched a similar aeroplane depart from the same point on the runway, with the F86 close behind. As the T-33 climbed out over the gap in the hedgerow at the end of the runway today it brought back the unhappy memory of watching the Golden Apple T-33 21261 cartwheeling through the gap and exploding with one of my engineer collegues in the back. A needless destruction of a beautiful aeroplane, much loved by the many who had been involved with her over the years and very sad for the operating company and those that flew and maintained it. Thankfully the occupants survived and were physically relatively unscathed by the event. Though the vision of that event is not one that I happily recall.:(

Old news, but would be nice to see it in public again at some point but I won’t hold my breath…

You definately didn’t see it “poking through the open side door”.

No, I can’t.

It could be the authentic F/FRXVIII Green/Brown desert scheme, but in a “nice” CAF high gloss polyurethane. Just like the RAF gateguards were in the 1970’s…

Or maybe I spelt SM845 as HS687, Kalaikunda/Bombay docks circa March 1978…

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s Gloss Black with a Knight’s helmet on the front in white…

That Magister is just lovely and looked exquisite as it bashed the circuit today. I wish someone would do something with R1914/G-AHUJ up in Scotland. It’s crying out to be loved.

They do, but I’ll cross it off my list when it has actually been finished. Don’t forget the Seafire had a ground run… for about 30 seconds! And how many years ago was that, and how many counties has it been to since Earls Colne…

Is it me or are DCW’s pictures all sort of compressed/distorted and looking one dimensional like film location “flats”? Duxman’s are fine.

I went on Saturday so can’t comment on today. However, it seemed to be such a missed opportunity to NOT have the Hawker biplanes (less the Hind that went t*ts up) in formation with the two Gladiators which were on immediately before and were downwind to land as the Hawkers rolled. It would only have meant 10 minutes more flying time to form up for one pass and the Gladiator pilots must have been formation qualified on their D.A.’s to have been doing their own routine. I guess that’s the enthusiast in me getting too expectant…:rolleyes:

OK, so 3pm is the time for a hog-roast, an ice-cream, the toilet, a drink, another look at Spitfire Survivors 2, a suncream uplift, a sleep, clean the camera, change a battery and getting ready for a pair of big Bristols… fnar fnar:highly_amused: