Duxford American Air Day

[B16Enk]

Well the weather was excellent, if a little variable on the lighting.

We booked in at 09:30 and armed with our 'Media' badges and the official photographer as escort we started our day.

Major John Haines was the PR officer for the USAAF, he gave us a heads up that the 2 star General (must look up his name) chief dog for the 3rd Air Force was due to sit in a Sabre 'pit, and then take a ride in a two seater spit.

Lucky bastage, those rides cost £2500.

Would we film it please?

Err...ok so they want us to get up close and personal with the oldest flying F86, and a Spitfire pre-flight and start up?

Ok..as they insisted .

The F86-A Sabre

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Mr 2* gets in, with a RAF Red Arrows pilot as guide (yes really and he is the guy who gets to fly the Sabre too).

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'Jets are for Women, this is what real men play with' - So said 'Rats' Radcliffe the ex-RAF Airbus Pilot who only gets to fly Spitfires every two weeks or so...

(The woman hogging the foreground is the Generals wife).

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Now this looks better.

The hangar belongs to 'The Aircraft Restoration Company' who bought all the 'Gate Guardian' Spitfires of the RAF, restored them all and made a little profit in the process...

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Rear pit view, from ground.

You can do anything from here, except start the engine!

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Front pit view from ground.

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Looks normal from here

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Rats takes a call on his cell 'phone, I'm sure that's not authentic BoB.

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General gets strapped in, 'it's easier to put the chute on when in the 'pit'.

And the steps were not on account of his age, honest.

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Engine running, she sounds beautiful.

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Taxiing

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Ready to go.

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The video footage will be good.

Jon (my brother) walked around during pre-flight with Rats, got the General getting in, the engine start up and taxi.

Then the take off before we had to leg it and get to our next filming appointment.

To be honest the rest of the day was pretty dull.

Filming aircraft coming in from the left,, leaving to the right.

Then coming from the right leaving to the left.

Rinse and repeat.

USAAF no longer permit their pilots to do anything other than level, but low and fast, flight

At least we were staioned on the Control Tower

The high light had to be when the Brits took up the US vintage aircraft, they at least knew how to throw them around and were willing to do so.

Bloody hell, the model 1/8 scale RC jet demonstration was more thrilling than the USAAF fly bys

Miss Velma, the P51 that had flown from the US (initially with Glacier Girl) was due to fly in formation with the Sabre, however she developed a fault on start up .

Funniest moment had to be when the Special Operations demo landed their C130, the loadmaster jumped out and waved the Special Ops team out...and nothing happened.

The bloody Humvee wouldn't start!

I won't have any footage to share for a week or two, I have to wait for my brother to review and edit it (we got about 3 hours of tape between our two cameras) and then get permission from Duxford to publish the bits we want - a formality.

Second air show I have seen through a mono chrome view finder, I have to say it's not the best way to see it!

Hope you enjoyed the few stills I had time to take.

[B16Enk]

Sorry about large image size, I tried resizing them but it wouldn't have done them justice.

Plus I had to post this in 3 chunks as my connection kept spitting it's dummy out.

[sged]

Oww man, this is cool!!

Can't wait for some unspoiled Merlin sound!!

[B16Enk]

Thanks Sged, I was starting to wonder if I was the only one

[Crash]

I like the spinning is prohibited I could do with that on mine.

[Painless]

~S~ Rog, WOOOOOOOW just seen this post M8.

OK, so, the USAAF were wussies right ? LOL

The HumVee wouldn't start right ?

That should provoke a response !!! HE HE HE

[B16Enk]

£2500 gets you about 30 minutes, several barrel rolls and at least one loop

I can't wait to see the footage my self, there definitely won't be an issue with my sharing the start up sound track

[Painless]

~S~ Rog,

thats going to be EVEN harder to get past Siobhan than the min £5000 for my PPL !!

[DoubleTap]

Excellent reporting, Roger.

[B16Enk]

I have just come back from seeing the 'rushes'.

Pretty good even if I say so myself.

The Spit start up is perfect, sound wise, although Jon was not briefed on the start up procedure for warbirds, and failed to keep a 'wide' angle on it.

The take off is awesome with a good bass speaker .

The remainder of the show looks good, I am guilty as charged of having gone close when I should have been wide, I have learnt an awful lot about video camera work tonight. Especially the multi camera specifics, whereby the 'close' when goofed needs a 'wide' to cut to until the 'close' has again got their shit in order.

We have discussed and pretty much decided that we will present Duxford IWM with a 'new media' show reel, footage showing the AC and a menu system that enables the viewers to read/discover more detail on each AC.

We would love to do a tour of Duxford, and document it's work on restoration.

To include up close footage of the work involved, a 'pilots view' when possible, and appropriate sound tracks.

Plus PC specific content, line drawings, biographies, time lines etc.

I will have something to share next week.