I’ve been crying out for a while now to see a video of that Last Lightning Airshow at Binbrook, what you have put on here is fantastic, but no-one seems to have any video of that epic take off, performed on the day, but never demonstrated on any practice video or film that I have ever seen.
For your titillation:-
The cover and back page of the programme, badly affected by that bloody awful weather.

The inside page showing the flying programme that mainly didn’t happen.

Then we had the additional print out listing all the Lightnings on the base, that I recall was an extra item.

Thought you might like that, but please, where is a vid of that epic, unforgettable take off.

I heard a rumour yesterday that Danni Minouge was going to be replaced with…Robbie Williams!

Let’s hope not, it might ruin his attempts at re-joining Take That, after all, if he joins them again, it might cause new rifts and force Britains ‘Greatest ever Band’ to split up again and then, thankfully, we won’t have to see their smug faces every time we turn the telly on.

I was surprised that Alexandra Burke won the X Factor, it seemed pretty obvious to us from the beginning that the public and judges would fall for the charms of the kid from NI, a smiley face with sinister eyes and a knack of singing flat, rather like the useless Leon Jackson who won it last year on the basis that he was doing it to help his poor widowed mother, sob, sob.
Thats the problem isn’t it, the ungifted one’s were really wringing out the tears and anguish to make sure that the public voted for them, which they did in droves.
Still, at least a decent singer won it this year, though I shall never be able to listen to Jeff Buckley the same way again.
As poor Leonard Cohen had all his money swindled off him by a dodgey manager, it will be a nice little earner for him, I presume that the public are aware that his nicely cynical lyrics are all about sex and not religion, which makes it an interesting Xmas number 1.

It’s turned into a very sunny but cold day down here, but even so I was very surprised to see a Spitfire fly over about half an hour ago, quite low and heading north, no doubt for Duxford. I suspect it may well have been BM597, but I can’t be sure. Very unusual to see one out and about at this time of year, does anyone know more.

Great pics and stories Spitfireman.

I have an amusing tale about St Mawgan. In 1973, my then girlfriend and our friends set off down to Cornwall for a camping holiday. We’d never been around there before and after struggling to find a campsite, we ended up on a site at Tregurrian. Unfortunately, my friends road map didn’t show the airfield, I must have had a vague knowledge of it, but not where we were in relation to the runway, ie directly in line with the end of it.
It was only after we’d put the tents up that I was aware of a Nimrod heading straight for us and getting lower, very low in fact, and straight over our heads, I thought it was great, but the others didn’t share my enthusiasm, particularly when the Nimrods were flying at night.
Unfortunately I never recorded what I saw, certainly Nimrods and Shackletons but I have a vague recollection of other things including Starfighters.
It wasn’t long before we abandoned the site and went to Paignton instead, not that I was that bothered, by coincidence we were a few hundred yards down the road from the Torbay Aircraft Museum.

I had a look on Google Earth and you can still see happy campers off the end of the runway, strange layout for an airfield, I presume it has a lot to do with the topography.
Incidentally, Google Earth shows a Spitfire parked in someone’s garden at the eastern end of the runway, I’m assuming it’s a GRP example, whats the story behind this.

Can anyone confirm this, I was present at the BoB 50th anniversay flypast at Buckingham Palace in September 1990, only a few weeks after the invasion of Kuwait, and the first aircraft in the leading diamond nine was wearing this particular ‘pink’ camouflage scheme, I don’t recall whether it was a Jaguar or a Tornado, I have slides somewhere, but we all thought at the time that it was a chilling foretaste of things to come.
As I recall, Humbrol very quickly brought out a tin of the requisite paint, which was a pinkish colour, (but not as much as those SAS desert Landrovers), applied to all aircraft, or so I thought.
At the time, my son was of an age where he was well into model kits and we had a right time adapting current kits into combat models with much use of a Rapidograph pen and bits of plastic and of course, that life saving Humbrol paint.
The USAF never adopted a different colour scheme as far as I know, so why did we bother spending all that money for nothing, the government must have employed a team of ‘experts’ who knew better.
Airshows in 1991 were really the place to be in the wake of the Gulf War, Mildenhall was magnificent, and I cannot forget the sight of those two ‘pink’ Buccs weaving their way across the runway at Finningley while the Tornado F3’s kept CAPS overhead.
I’m shifting stuff around between the loft and garage at the moment, when I come across my paint box, I’ll see if the Humbrol paint tin has a BS reference on it.

Is anybody here old enough.. apart from Pete Truman and myself.. to remember the Rag Trade with Reg and the late Miriam Carlin..now that was a funny show

Thanks Steve, back with a bang as usual, I’ve been really worrying about you, I don’t know why I had reason to even contemplate possibly missing your praises of naff films and crappy programmes.
Yes, I remember the Rag Trade, I wonder if they saved any copies as they tended to re-use old video tape, in this case, quite right too, they should have got rid of them, it was an awfull programme.
Reg Varney was a good old trooper, but come on, On the Buses, what a terrible programme, they’ve shown the spin off films a few times recently and they were an embarrasment, the best part about it was seeing all those old vintage Bristol Loddeckas, yes times have changed and comedy with it, but I reckon old Reg was a better advert for Brylcreeme than comedy, bless him.
Nice to see you back on form Steve, look after yourself, no surfing for a few weeks I reckon.

Great news, all the best mate.