Thanks for this great insight to your amazing collection Steve.

What scale is the balsa and tissue Cud? teehee

I was seriously looking for ages through the photos looking for a tailwheel of a Vickers Vincent before I realised it was a motorcycle and not a plane being referred to. Feel like an idiot.

I wasn’t physically at the airshow, but I have the official video. Wanaka 94, when they took caravan up to a great height with a helicopter, then dropped it. The funniest part on the video is the planning where you see Sir Tim Wallis actually hoped to convince the local firefighters to be inside it!!

Those incidents mentioned where American jets went and displayed at the wrong airfield are amusing (and makes you think about how many wrong towns they’d bomb in combat due to similar navigational errors!) but I was thinking, it is a very dangerous situation for the aerodrome that they are wrongly displaying at. If the pilot thinks he’s over Duxford and radios accordingly, Cambridge’s air traffic isn’t going to expect a jet swooping down through its circuit. They’re damed lucky there have not been any air to air accidents. I recall when I flew in the AFC Avenger from Christchurch to Wanaka we did a buzz of every little airport on the way, and as we swooped on one airfield (Te Anau from memory) I saw a passenger commuter plane taking off right in our direction. Technically it was an air miss as we were well within the two kilometre zone. I don’t know if our pilot even saw it, as he was looking elsewhere. Gave me a fright.

Maybe “Time Team”?

That’s funny, Dave, because I’m sure most accounts about the making of the movie say it WAS shot at Scampton…

:rolleyes:

Well, that is what I thought too. But this chap Brian and I spent qa whole afternoon together and he’s a really knowledgable bloke. Everything else he said seemed right, so I have no reason to doubt his word. In fact this site here also backs him up:
http://www.continuitycorner.com/Dfilm/00028.htm

I think a tiny bit was done at Scampton, around the mess or something. But Brian said that most of the film was not made on Scampton at all but instead at the base he was on, which I’m sure he said was Hemswell. I’ll ask him again.

He also said he remembers seeing the Wellington they used in the film fly into their station, and all the Lincolns posing as Lancs.

The Russians were probably so busy laughing at these tubby little bumblebees coming up at them that they forgot to shoot back.

Honestly, when very experienced RAF, RAAF, RNZAF, Dutch and USN pilots found them worthless junk in a fight with the Japs, I really think the Finn’s abilities must be down to either tactics no-one else thought of or the Russians they came up against were very inexperienced units compared with the Japs.

Perhaps the Finns had a better system of early warning so they had time to get a height advantage – most of the Buffalo kills I’ve read of were when raids happened to appear while the Buffaloes were already airborne, they were useless at scrambling and gaining a height advantage as I understand it, usually knocked down in the climb or on the deck.

Did the fact that the Finnish ones had wooden wings make them more manouvrable and better in a fight?

Agreed, it is nice to see the Buffalo on here as a nice bit of variety from the usual run of the mill Mustangs and Spits, and there are indeed some very interesting photos on this thread of the type, no matter how bad its record was.

Although the weather was great and there was some awesome flying, the Wings Over Waikato 95 airshow was the worst I have been to. This was held at nearby Hamilton International Airport, at Rukuhia.

The reason I found it disappointing was that the organisers, who were largely the Tainui Maori tribal leaders, a bunch of greedy bloodsucking businessmen who do little for their tribe or the greater community, did what they do best, sucked all the money out and left many people bitter. They had advertised for months that a Russian Su27 display team was coming, because the team was doing a world tour. Because of that I bought a Gold Pass ($150) which only got me a seat on a pitiful grandstand and nothing else.

The day before the weekend show began they announced the Russians were not coming. It was revealed in the press this was simply because the organisers refused to pay for th team’s overnight accomodation. Simply ridiculous. Considering all the advertising they’d done and all the pre-sold tickets from people who wanted to see them, it was a disgrace.

Secondly they also advertised a flyover display by a Stealth bomber, on its way back from a big Aussie airshow. Yes, there was a Stealth visiting that week in Australia which was at a notable airshow, so this was highly plausible. But no, it was a hoax. All they did was have the commentator say here it comes can you see it…. and then let off a pyro on the airfield. Total wankas.

The worst thing of all was this was set up to be the alternate year airshow to Wanaka. There was much in the press and much support from local businesses and the community. But the Tainui refused to pay visiting warbirds exhibitors. So the idea of an ongoing two-yearly show was canned because no-one wanted to come back here, and there has never been an airshow of any merit in Hamilton since. I do not blame the warbirds operators one bit!

Those who did display were fantstic, such as Trevor Bland and the NZ Warbids, Sir Tim Wallis and his collection, and the late Sir Kenneth Hayr. And other highlights for me were meeting Ross Mcpherson (the late, great editor of NZ Wings magazine, whom I’d coressponded with often but only met him on this occasion, and he died not too long afterwards from cancer 🙁 ), also meeting up with Sir Tim and Ray Mulqueen again from the AFC, I hadn’t seen them in a while. And also a great laugh hearing some Warbirds expert spouting how Sir Tim have bought Motat’s Lancaster and was going to have it flying by the next year’s Wanaka airshow. I love hearing idiots compel stupid rumours like that!

But overall the airshow leaves a very bitter taste in the mouth thinking about what it could have been, and what it could have developed into. Now the two-yearly big airshows are only in the South Island at Omaka and Wanaka, where they have fantastic organisers. We still have Ardmore’s annual show which is also fantastic but the AFC don’t come all that way up to Ardmore any more. And Masterton’s airshow is too far from anywhere to travel to.

Hamilton is the centre of the North Island and could have been brilliant, world class, if they hadn’t had the inherently greedy tribal leaders involved. Grrrrrrr!!!!