Interesting about the Broncos, they have been parked together in the same spot for a while now but when I drove past DX on Monday, one of them was parked right behind Area 51 hangar next to the motorway roughly where the Grumman Goose had been, I was looking at that, when I noticed Sally B taxi past. I presume the taxying job, and I could only see one of them, was receiving the attention of a screwdriver and spanner inside the hangar. Strange beasts, and a strange existance for them.

Sorry Al, don’t know, but I used to cycle out to Langar when I was a kid and it was full of Shackletons recieving repairs, the gate security were nasty pieces of work and threatened to take away our cameras, I’m sure the Soviets were desperate to get hold of our pictures of an a/c, which even in those far off days, was pretty antiquated in Cold War terms.

Bearcat

Looks like you have seen a fairly interesting selection of Aircraft. Be interested to know what you thought of the Voodoo, never seen one of those. The Republic Thunderchief was another Jet of that era, which I would have liked to have seen. Please send in some more threads about your experiences at Airshows, and anyone else for that matter.

Here you go, a couple of shots from the 60’s, the first at Cottesmore in formation with F100’s the next at Waddington, yes they were noisy beasts.
I can’t find my Thunderchief picture, weren’t they phased out from Wethersfield and replaced by the F100 in the early 60’s and where were Voodoos based.

Had a lucky moment this morning. While driving to a site meeting in Cambs, I went through Duxford village and was going over the M11 roundabout at about 9:00 when out the corner of my eye I saw Sally B lining up at the end of the runway, I shot down the other end and saw her lift of straight and level when I was just past the tank hall. I then turned up the road past the bottle bank and got out on top of the hill. Unfortunatley, following a swimming session at Jesus Pool yesterday my ears require extensive syringing and I can hardly hear a thing today, not even Sally B on full throttle.
She did a very leisurely turn and was climbing away towards Linton before becoming a dot in the sky, perhaps a leaflet drop on Mildenhall in support of the peace campaigners.
I also noticed Spitfire EC-G sitting on the grass at the time and this had vanished by the time I had returned.

It has to be the mysterious Russian Stirling that we are being wound up about, perhaps we could see it towing a Horsa as well, I’m sure Travis Perkins would do a good deal on large amounts of plywood.
Could be a good Legends next year, following a mock ground attack from Typhoons found intact in Tibet, the Stirling drops off the Horsa on to the Pegasus Bridge that has been purchased from France and re-erected over the far side of the airfield, reached by a tunnel from the Land Warfare Hall. Endless lines of Dakotas will drop off airborne troops led by Richard Todd in his final jump, the German vehicles in the LWH will then roar across the airfield, churning up the grass landing strip and the runway with their tracks, thus preventing the Balbo taking off, but no matter, this will consist of a former Russian Stirling and a squadron of Tibetan Typhoons, much more interesting I think, even though they will have to land at Marshalls.
Sorry, I’m in a funny mood today.

Thanks for re-discovering this thread, which has answered a question for me.
I always thought that the Kings Cup air race was held at the 1983 Wethersfield Airshow, but looking at the list of events, it was an F/1 race.
On the Friday before the show, I was on my way home to High Garrett, Braintree, having carried out a survey in Thaxted, having to pass through Wethersfield any way, I thought I’d wander up the Toppesfield road and see if there were any early arrivals.
The airfield is not very good for seeing anything from the road so I went to the north crash gate. On the way I noticed swarms of small brightly coloured a/c buzzing about but didn’t register what was happening.
When I got to the gate, I wondered what the strange pylon was that had been erected just inside, I soon found out, it was one of the turning points and the competitors were having a practice, flying so low that I got very nervous and beat a hasty retreat, how they were missing the security fence was beyond me.
I don’t remember much about the event on the day of the airshow, I was probably more interested in the heavy metal and American hospitality on the day, I think I’d just aquired my new toy which was a very nice Canon 100-400 telephoto so I’ve probably got some good slides of the event somewhere.

The event got reasonable coverage on BBC Look East at 18:30 last night, I was particularly impressed when he went into a vertical climb, I have’nt seen that done before.
Were there many people around the airfield, I went to the Victor farewell and it was very busy, we trekked across the fields to the west end of the runway from where they were taking off, it wasn’t a good idea though to stand directly behind a Victor powering up for take off, but some idiots got deafened, singed and blown over.
We also went to the RAF 75th anniversary celebrations which was a complete wash out, because the Queen was on the base, security outside was way over the top and there was a lot of friction between the enthusiasts and the police, to the extent that we hastily retreated to the nearest pub.

Why would the Russians want to evaluate a bomber that was obsolete, apart from use as a glider tug, in 1945. Would it have something to do with the massive undercarriage being more suitable for Arctic Circle landings on snow, ice or permafrost.

I like the model of the Soviet Lancaster, but why was the nose so different, had the originals been so damaged that the nose from the contemporary Russian 4 engined bomber was grafted on.