Take a trip to the Mach Loop. Last week I had an almost private display of F15 Eagles, Tornados, GR9 Harriers, Typhoon, Hawks, Alphajet, Herc and the Red Arrows. All passing by below me.

 

£15 per person this year
I'm heading off to RIAT shortly, hope those of you that go have a good time

 

For those of you going Sunday, Typhoon and Red Arrows flypast at 17:01. (sunday only)

Nimrod MR4 is Satuday only.

 

i went to skytanker 85, friday to the monday, it was superb,

 

Oh C*ck!

 

Looks like I have a two tickets free for RIAT on Saturday and possibly 1 or two on Sun (TBC).
PM me if interested.
They'll need to be picked up from our hotel.
Won't be able to respond until this evening as I'm about to travel down.

Nick

 

Got cancelled anyway due to the weather!

 

I saw a swift shot of part of the instrument panel and i see that it is true that the MFS has been replaced by a standard artificial horizon. That would make it quite a bit harder to fly in IMC because of the large pitch changes with speed on the Vulcan. The MFS was by far the best instrument flying system that I ever used. Pity it had to be removed. It was quite difficult to go back to normal instrumentation.

Les

 

The aviator hotel in Farnborough has updated its Airshow packages.... My god...... You can buy a plane for the price of some of these deals:
Aviator Hotel - Contemporary Stylish Hotel in Farnborough Hampshire - Airshow 2010

 

I thought the RIAT was fantastic this year. Ok a good few years since I last went to an airshow, but went this year on the Saturday and the weather was nice and the displays were superb.

What I thought really made it was the commentry which was excellent - the commentry on the Red Arrows was especially good, by a current Red Arrows pilot. Very informative, and witty as well.

I could have happily gone both days as there was so much to see, I didn't manage to see all the static aircraft displays.

One of my mates flys Tornado's and he was saying the RAF only have the money for one full-time display pilot, and he does the Typhoon display. No longer any Harrier displays due to lack of funds.

F117a is basically very old technology tho - designed in the late 60's/early 70's and entered service in the late 70's. The F-22 basically replaces it, and it's got better technology and stealth, and the F-22 was massively expensive to maintain which is probably one of the reasons it was taken out of service - I think it needed frequent re-paints and to be kept in a temperature controlled hanger.

 

Yeah seems a bit odd that...

You'd think they'd keep production going for a while, then slowly start selling units to close allies like Israel etc. Guess money is tight, and they want to keep what is currently probably the best fighter-bomber for US use only.

Seems odd to spend $65billion on a project and only make 175 planes tho?

 

Thanks for that Nat, I knew Chris Lumb well, his crew and mine got our "Command" badges at the same time. He was Station Commander at Brize shortly after I left the VC10.

Les

 

I spent a long time trying to persuade them to let me display the Dominie but got exactly the same answer-not enough money even though the Jetstream did a display at the time.

Les

 

The world is a different place now, the F22 was developed as an air dominance fighter at the height of the cold war. No real need for it now.
They do have around 2000 F35's on order currently.