Yep and Old Warden isn’t far away, though a journey you think shouldn’t take too long always ends up over half an hour!
This is their Lysander from a few years back in 2018. I have some of the Gladiator too somewhere but no idea what disc they’re saved on!
The Storch was flying so slowly it actually made it kinda tricky to photograph as it seemed to be barely moving!
Four lovely Merlins on the Lancaster, that was the aeronautical equivalent of two fingers to old Ay-dolf!
There was another Martlett flying at Duxford earlier this week . Done up in Royal Navy desert camouflage
No overseas holiday for Ian next year, but I will try and get to Duxford and Shuttleworth
Shuttleworth is well worth a visit on a non-display day. Fairly quiet, and a pleasant change from the relentless military theme at Duxford.
Lovely picture. Back in the '70s I built the Airfix 1/24 scale model of the Hawker Hurricane and had it suspended from the ceiling at a rakish angle rather like the one in your picture.
For me, it was the Spitfire.
Forgive me for a slight departure from the ‘vintage’ theme (although ‘Cosmic Girl’ probably qualifies in that respect). I hope that followers of this thread would find this snippet of news as exciting for the UK as I do!
Hi Swanny, as the OP of this thread , I have no problems whatsoever with it’s inclusion
One day it will be vintage
best wishes
Ian
Cosmic Girl first flew in Jan 2001, so will soon be 22 years old, and typical retirement lives for a 747 are 27-30 years. Maybe less in the current environmental and economic times. So thanks for posting it - the 747 was always my favourite as a passenger and while it may never reach the status of truly vintage your posting is a chance to enjoy the 747 while I can!
I would like to mention two aeroplanes.
First up, the English Electric Lightning (photos of which appear near the start of this thread). My late father was a medical officer in the RAF, so I grew up living on RAF stations in England, Germany and Cyprus. The Lightning was therefore an essential part of my growing up. Their pilots used to like taking off as flat as possible, then pulling the joystick back and flying them straight up into the sky at 90 degrees. An amazing sight, and the howl from the two Rolls Royce engines mounted one on top of the other was truly terrifying!
The second (superficially quite similar to the Lightning) was the beautiful Concorde, flown only by British Airways and Air France, because the Yanks were so pee’ed off that they hadn’t built it. I must have flown in these planes eight or nine times. Flying out of JFK in New York in a Concorde was astonishing, brought about by noise controls that the Yanks had put in place especially for Concorde. Essentially, the plane would sit at one end of the runway and quickly bring all four of its engines up to full power before the pilot engaged full thrust and the plane went off as if shot from a catapult. Then, shortly after the plane was airborne, the pilot would pull on the controls to turn the plane onto its side (literally) to avoid flying over Manhattan airspace. The aircrew never warned passengers of this manoeuvre, and I almost sh*t myself the first time I experienced it.
I don’t suppose that any of us will ever see the like of Concorde ever again, sadly.
The other thing that I remember so clearly about Concorde is how uncomfortable the seats were. The BA seats were finished in lovely grey leather, but there was practically no padding (presumably a weight saving measure), so it was just as well that the flight between JFK and LHR averaged just over three hours (depending on the prevailing winds).
Another amusing thing about Concorde occurs to me.
The morning flight from LHR to JFK (codesign Speedbird 001) took off at 10:30 AM GMT but landed (theoretically before it took off) in JFK at 9:30AM EST!
[Passengers then had to negotiate the dreadful queues at US Customs & Immigration, but Concorde passengers had their own queue.]
For so many years we’d hear the morning rumble and the evening rumble from Concorde and if you’d had your head down at work, the first reminded you to grab a cuppa, the second to think about going home.
The father of a University friend had a picture of Concorde above his fireplace. He lived in Bristol, was a former Royal Engineer and had helped build it. He reeled off superlatives about his third baby that no other civil airliner could match.
Later, in 2003, my American wife and I would go into the garden to watch it fly over, aware that we would not see its like again. We revelled in the noise, it was inspiring and outrageous all at the same time.
Both my children were born after Concorde was withdrawn, the cost cutting and the sad demise of the doomed Air France plane really sealing its fate. I wish I’d been able to show them this thing slicing through the air, or how it flew in partnership with the Red Arrows at air shows. It was an ever present part of my life from childhood onwards and what a thing it was!
Reading the comments from the passengers that flew in it, the engineers that make it. All I can say is . my former employers made the toilets .
I’m not sure that any Concorde flight that I was ever on lasted long enough for me to need to ‘inspect the plumbing’!
Could never understand why the toilets had frosted glass windows.
Who’s going to look in at 60,000 feet?
(thanks to David Gunson - “What goes up might come down”)
