It may have been damp, but the show must go on

As usual it was a wet and rainy bank holiday in Britain, but still Paul, Jo, Jordan, Kelly, Greg and myself went to see the wonder that is the Southend Airshow.

You can be assured that the Southend Airshow will either be very wet, or very hot. Unfortunately this year wasn’t exactly hot. There was a lot of wind and some wet stuff falling from the sky. However the airshow went ahead with a restricted schedule. The Tucano and Hawk failed to put in appearance, as did, quite understandably, the BBMF (Battle of Britain Memorial Flight) and Warbirds. The Chinook also failed to fly yesterday. However Those that did fly managed to, as always, impress.

I have various of the pictures on my Flickr (Photostream on the right or just go straight here). As you can tell the skies were gray, and almost constantly dripping on us, so the pictures aren’t as good as they could have been. As always static images of these aircraft can’t do them justice. Anyone who has seen the Red Arrows live will know what I mean, the shots don’t do justice to the small distance they have between them. The Same with the Black Cats, those Lynx helicopters are big, and relatively slow, however they can still pull off a pretty good display.

For me the highlight was seeing, and hearing, the Eurofighter Typhoon. The RAF’s multi-role combat aircraft. Those twin engines pack a punch, being able to push the craft to Mach 2 at 65,000ft. The one thing that really impresses me about the this aircraft is that the pilot can use his voice to carry out various things whilst manoeuvreing.

So despite the rain and the cold everyone had a good time, enjoyed the show and are ready to do it all again next year. Paul’s account is here and I’ll add in if anyone else posts.

*updated* Jo’s account here

MTFBWY