And the related engines from 2010. But all this only, when all works fine really.

which will take how long???????????????????????????????????

Did anyone see this, any interesting revelations ?

NONE AT ALL!!!! 😉

Superb pic Bigverne, were you in the back seat then, just to think, 10mins before that was taken they’d just come right over my house at Witham, we were standing in the back garden supping pints at the time, I’m going to raid my slide boxes and see what I can find.
DB
Where did you take your shots of the practice and have you got any more.

For those who don’t know, there’s always a flypast on the Queens Official Birthday following Trooping the Colour, she nips back to the Palace, no doubt has a quick snifter and watches from the balcony at 13:00, they usually miss most of it out on the live TV coverage.
The formations form up over Southwold, Suffolk and head inland, by the time they reach Essex, they more or less follow the main Ipswich-Liverpool St line through Colchester, Kelvedon, Witham, and Chelmsford.
Ahead of the formations are always a couple of Hawks weaving about at low level, to check on the weather and low flying civvies, for the past few years from wherever I’ve been watching, there’s always been some nutter stooging about in a Cessna, probably deliberately.
My missus calls the Hawks ‘Little Friends with pirate flags on the tails’, now that’s one Liz that does enjoy the planes.
When I lived in Witham, they used to come right over the house every year and at the time I was working in Chelmsford where the practice session for 77 came right over the office.
I reckon that a good spot to watch is a little railway bridge just a few miles east of Kelvedon, you can do a bit of trainspotting while waiting as well.
Otherwise, do your shopping at Morrisons, Witham at about 12:45, they will come over the carpark right on cue.
When it was the Queens Golden Jubilee we went to watch at Hatfield Peveril station, which is about where the reserve planes and Hawks leave the formation, the weather Hawk came sniffing about and was obviously unhappy with the large black cloud overhead and the whole formation swung over to the north and passed about half a mile away which did not help the camera.
During the Gulf War Flypast in 1991, I went and stood on a hill by the M25 near Brentwood, unfortunately, the weather was so bad that they all flew up the Thames estuary and I didn’t see a thing.
Will be interested to see the route of the BBMF on Saturday, now, where’s that battery charger.

Not my photo, I’ve never flown in a Gant and I was only 11 at the time. I was at RAFM Hendon on my Birthday Treat on that day and did hear the formation overfly Hendon on egress as I heard a lot of aircraft in formation overfly the place while in the museum. The photo is a linked shot from the Red Arrows Official Web site. ‘Little Friends with pirate flags on the tails’ would be from 100 Sqn.

Bah! The Belfast was a fine plane. Some served as civilian freighters for many years after the RAF disposed of ’em (one may still be in use, in Australia). Should have kept ’em. And an improved version would have been nice. How many years did we have to charter civilian planes for anything a C-130 couldn’t carry, until the C-17s arrived?

Yes canning the Belfast in 1976 was a no brainer as far as the RAF was concerned, saying that I was happy because I got to see the Heavylift ones operating out of Stansted on a very regular basis 😀 . It was either 1980 (Zimbabwe) or 1982 (Falklands) that the RAF started to charter them, and we still do charter civil transports, even with the C-17’s in service (AN-124’s were chartered during Op Telic, and a civil airline does the Falklands flights, as well as the F3 swaps done by AN-124’s).

“Would you like fries with that?”

A comment on that crew’s future employment prospects by any chance. :diablo: :diablo: :diablo:

Just yank the two engines out and replace them with one big one and call it an F-20.

I was going to add that one too, however, how many F-20’s are operated by the world’s air forces?

The simple question would be…. Why would you want to put 4 engines in a twin engined aircraft in the first place? You will have twice the maintence costs on engines for starters, your Throttle box would be a handfull to put it mildly, Plus all the extra pipework and control runs which will add weight. A complete no brainer of an idea.

Not quite. Remember the large scale passenger jet crash tests in the USA thirty or so years a ago? Lots of video of a simulated approach accident (including passenger cabin shots showing the dummies) where they actually missed the precise intended impact area.

Opps 😮 , I forgot about that one, It was a 707 or 720 that was used in a test of a fuel additive designed to reduce the chance of a fireball being caused by fuel being thrown forward from wing tank damage in the case of a crash landing. The test involved the aircraft hitting posts designed to simulate runway approch lights. I do remember the test not exactlly going to plan (Like the fuel did fireball).