Thursday, September 24, 2009

Victory Show at Cosby

In the end, I didn't manage to attend any air shows this year except the victory show held at Cosby in Leicestershire. This was literally a 10 minute drive from me and when I saw that there was going to be a display by the Battle of Britain flight along with a couple of P51 mustangs, Boeing B17 'Sally B' AND not least a 'bombing run' by the Vulcan XH558, I couldn't resist.

I was not disappointed, a great day all in all and we enjoyed a flypast (not a display) by the Red Arrows but the Vulcan did a full display rather than just a single 'bombing run' as the advertising suggested (incidentally the associated pyrotechnics for the bombs going off were excellent as they were for the ground battle re-enactment).

I was surprised to find they had actually created a grass strip running north/south for visiting aircraft and there were a few light aircraft that arrived including wartime 'spotter' type planes and most noticeably a Hawker Hurricane - all of which you could get very close to on the parking line.

Altogether a thoroughly enjoyable day and one I will look forward to next year.

Btw - they were using one of the standard air show frequency allocations for the weekend of 130.625Mhz. Some pilots were having problems communicating with the air/ground operator as I believe he was only using a hand-held Icom transceiver.