A real shame

It is a real shame the Southend Airshow has been cancelled. To the people who said the parking was a nightmare, all you need to do is to come into Southend from the East, park in Shoeburyness for free and travel into town on the bus ! or as we did put up a pup tent sunday evening and went both days. The weather in recent years hasn’t been too good but the sight of the Vulcan cruising silently from the shoebury end and full power climb by the Casino was something really special. The Nimrod, Canberra and sea Vixen took up the challenge late 90’s !

with all the orange people and track suits it was one in a million for entertainment 🙂 🙂

Don’t get me wrong, I find the building itself impressive and it contains a wonderful and informative collection. But I do have just two things I hate about the whole thing.
1) That God awful design for a doorway. I just can’t understand what the architect was thinking, let alone the fact that it got through a safety inspection.
2) The Medium Stressed Platform in the Belfast, an aircraft that they were never dropped from. Its not even standing on roller floor so how on earth did they get it in there, let alone expect to get it out? It would be better displayed in or near the Argosy or Hercules, both type which have droppped them.

Now don’t get me going on the Props on Hercules XV202 I have finally recieved an acceptance of my original emal on the X formation is wrong 🙂
that said how is the Nimrod looking ? and where have they parked her ?

HMS Pursuer naval-history.net info

http://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-05CVE-Pursuer.htm

Looks like she didn’t make it to the pacific till late 45 was involved in the malayan landings Operation Zipper in August 1945

what is the truth with these two planes please

Hi Amarok,

The Hawks allocated to the Red Arrows pool were upgraded with the mods to become T Mk 1As, they were fully combat-capable with AIM-9 compatibility and Aden pod for use as supplementary AD assets. A quick wash with water-soluble paint and they were ready to go!

I understand that the problem has arisen since the T Mk 2 programme was funded as there was no provision made for the additional rebuilt airframes needed to maintain the Red Arrows pool.

Thank you for the update
Kind regards

makes sense

I recall when I left the RAF in 1980 they had just converted from Gnats to Hawks. The Hawks issued to the Red Arrows were new build MK1’s from British Aerospace.
I suspect over the past 30 years the service Hawks have been progressively updated and modded (T1A ?) but the Arrows aircraft were only updated as necessary as they were not going to be used as trainers, but only as display aircraft.
With the introduction of the new Hawk into RAF service it would make good financial sense to evaluate the Arrows fleet against the Fleet in storage with a view to swapping out for the best available.

Vulcan is down to appear at Southend on that day

JB,
the Vulcan is down as closing the show at Southend airshow Sat 28th I hope it stays at Southend overnight so we can have 2 vulcans side by side for Sunday 🙂