The Swift Aerobatic Display Team were honoured to be asked to display at the 21st Battle of Britain Airshow at Shoreham this year. The south coast was plagued by bad weather for the entire weekend, including the displays at Bournemouth and Shoreham. The glider closed the display at Shoreham on Saturday, and opened the show on Sunday morning.
Team Member Mike Newman flew the Swift glider for the Sunday display and had an accident on landing.
The glider has been badly damaged, but Mike freed himself from the wreckage. He was treated by paramedics at the scene and then taken to hospital for detailed checks.
Mike is in good spirits and the whole team wish him a speedy recovery.
The Swift Aerobatic Display Team will be honouring all our remaining display commitments where possible in 2010.
Paul Barker joined the Team for the start of a Great Britain tour, that in 8 days included both Scotland and the tip of Cornwall with the Swift glider spending 15 hours on aerotow covering almost 1000nm.
The marathon started with the mid week RAF Families’ days at Henlow and Wyton. RAF Henlow airfield and our base at Halton are significant as the RAF’s last remaining grass airfields. Congratulations must got to Sqn Ldr Paul Tuite for organising both events on a shoe string budget. Star of both shows was undoubtedly Phil Burgess in his distinctive DR107 One Design.
The weather stayed fine and from RAF Wyton on Friday afternoon, we aerotowed the Swift to Fishburn airfield, just south of Newcastle for a short Friday evening display to open the 22nd Sunderland airshow. The display featured Miss Demeanour, (Jonathon Whaley’s Zoom Lolly Hunter), our glider and the Royal Netherlands Air Force F16 flown with re-heat and decoy flares leading into fireworks.
We swapped our wingtip smoke for pyrotechnics for probably the World’s first ‘roll-on-tow’ display with wingtip fireworks over water, to Vangelis’ moving theme from the 1982 movie ‘Missing’ staring Jack Lemmon. Our twilight display was choreographed for maximum effect, with the wingtip pyrotechnics timed for 10 mins after sunset leaving enough time to land at Newcastle International airport at 21:50, still just within ‘day’ time.
The show at Sunderland has been plagued with poor weather over the past few years, but better forecasts saw thousands flock to see the fireworks and almost a million spectators over the weekend.
From Newcastle we towed up the Northumberland Coastline the following morning past RAF Boulmer for their Families day and then found hundreds of Grey Seals basking on sand dunes around the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. Further north we past St Abbs Head lighthouse, famous for its 1876 foghorn and on to East Fortune, home to the East Lothian national Museum of Flight.
Almost 10,000 spectators watched both our Swift and Twister Duo displays under cloudy skies. We operated from the disused runway at East Fortune, now converted into a go-cart track. Commentator was George Bacon who chose Clannad’s theme from Harry’s Game for our display and then we started the long haul home.
Matt Robain ferried the S1-Swift south with Paul Barker stopping at Sutton Bank for fuel.
The last part of the epic week was a trip to the West Country, lead by Ian Gallacher. We departed Bicester at 08:30 for Cornwall via a refuel stop at North Hill in Devon. Despite cloud base lowering to 1000ft over the moors and a few light showers en-route, the traditionally wet Culdrose Airday enjoyed a mainly sunny day. The Navy show had some real treats, with the new AV8ers and Vulcan XH558, but we couldn’t hang around and found a reasonable tailwind to return to Bicester in one long flight.
Swift Team pilot Mike Newman has just returned from the 10th FAI European Glider Aerobatic Championships (EGAC) in Finland, The competition at Jämijärvi was plagued with delays caused by strong winds in the box that lost almost half of the 8 day competition. Fortunately with long days when the weather was good, the 28 competitors completed a full compliment of 3 flights.
Mike finished the Known, Unknown and Free programs in 10th, 15th and 14th place, to finish the Europeans in 11th place over all.
The Scandinavian venue also hosted the 1st ever FAI Worlds for the Advanced Class and the 32 competitors included a strong British Team. Ace of the base was Maz Makari who won the first ever British Medal at an FAI World event in glider Aerobatics by taking Silver in the Known sequence.
Team Swift were involved in the latest Walls sausage advert a few weeks ago for the new “Bring it on Britain” campaign. Pete Wells of Zuluglasstek constructed the composite camera mounts used on the Buckminster Gliding clubs SZD-50 Puchacz gliders, and Guy Westgate was flying stuntman for the air-2-air and ground shots.
The advert follows active 78 year old granny Cathy Lawrence as she takes a flight at Saltby, watched by her family.
The 70th Anniversary of RNAS Yeovilton marked the Second of Pete Wells and the Silence Twister joining the Swift team for our integrated display. The weather was also very similar to our first display in 2008, with a dull start and strong southerly (on crowd) wind.
The cloud started breaking by midday however, to enable Ian Gallacher, Guy Westgate and Pete to fly a full display infront of the 30,000 strong crowd. The Air Day lineup was truly impressive with the Vulcan giving possibly the most spirited display todate. There were several formation teams, with the Red Arrows, Royal Jordanian Falcons and Spanish Air Force Patrulla Aguila.
Firing of flares over land was banned for a few years but this year saw 3 teams indulge. The Danish and Danish F16s both released flares, as did the Lynx helicopter. Yeovilton was also significant for the scale of the pyrotechnics in the Navy’s role demo, the wall of fire burnt almost a ton of fuel in a second!
Thanks must go to Paul Johnson and James George for crewing and Matt Robain for ferrying a Twister.
Windlesham House School staged ‘Elements’ in 2007, the most advanced show ever staged by a school in the UK. They went one better this year with a weekend festival spectacular branded ‘Odyssey 2010’ on July 3rd. The creative genius behind the Odyssey Journey is the School’s music director, Anthony Hutchings (Hutch) who involved not only the entire school, but also many of his former students and high flyers from the worlds of performing arts, multi-media entertainment and aviation to make it a show to remember!
The concerts featured TV celebrities, astronauts sending messages from the International Space Station, firework displays, spectacular laser light shows, air displays and hundreds of children, rock bands and the Bootleg Beatles headlining Sunday’s grand finale.
Our Saturday glider display was a new venture; with wingtip sparklers replacing the usual orange smoke and choreographed to illuminate the evening horizon behind the giant rock stage. The flight was planned to finish at the end of civil twilight, the latest time permitted for a glider to land in UK, at Sunset + 30mins.
Other highlights of the daytime airshows were Al Kay in the OFMC Mustang, the new Redhawk Duo pairing of Bob Grimstead and Matt Hill’s RF4s. Last but not least the Vulcan also displayed.
Thanks must go first to Southdown Gliding Club and its members for sanctioning an aerotow long after their normal evening curfew and to Flying Display Director Phill O’Dell who was only just overshadowed by Hutch for is raw enthusiasm and infectious energy. Finally to Jim Pearce for use of his airstrip.
All proceeds for the weekend go to the children’s medical research charity, Sparks.
Pictures by Guy Westgate, Jane Denman and Judi Hutchings
Luxemburg is not a big country, in fact we could have flown around it several times in the time it took to aerotow the Swift from Halton to Bitburg in Germany, the venue for their biannual airshow.
The line up was truly international, with many types and teams that rarely cross the Channel to UK, like the only flying PZL-106 Kruk ‘Raven’ Ag-plane in Europe, a Junkers Ju52 and Noratlas Nord2501 transport types.
Due to the tragic Frecce Tricolori accident at Ramstein in 1988, German airshow restrictions are now unduly restrictive, with formation aerobatics limited to 500ft. The display lines are also more distant than those permitted in UK, so that small aircraft have a limited “stage presence” and formation teams dominated the lineup at Bitburg including the Belgian Siai Marchetti team “Hardship Red”, The French Armee De L’Air Socata TB30 Epsilons and a Swiss team of Pilatus P3s. Although the quality of formation flying was generally good, the lack of smoke and frequent long gaps between passes made us realise just how lucky we are to have the likes of the Blades, the Aerostars and Yakoslevs in UK.
Saturday’s Evening entertainment started by watching the Event Organiser Frank Weyrich take a wingwalking flight with the Breitling Team, and ended with the local Bitburg beer, ‘currywurst’ and chips.
Crowd numbers were down on Sunday, perhaps due to the scorching weather forecast but more likely the German-English football match of the World cup?
The flight back to UK was uneventful, with a refuelling stop at Lille Marcq and fantastic visibility under blue skies around London, so we could enjoy the Red Bull Matadores displaying at Biggin Hill 30 miles to the south of our route.
Thanks have to go to the tugpilots for the weekend Paul Moslin and Ian Gallacher, and Mike Newman who represented the team at Biggin Hill flying a Pilatus B4.
The 48th Biggin Hill International Air Fair took place in scorching weather over the last weekend in June. With half the team displaying at Bitburg in Germany, Mike Newman displayed a Pilatus B4 glider at Biggin ably assisted by Dennis Maddocks in RAFGSA Cosford’s Super Chipmunk.
The organisers at Biggin Hill had put together a superb line up to the celebrated the 70th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain with no less five Hawker Hurricanes, five Spitfire, a Buchon and a Me108 all flying together recreating an 1940’s airfield attack and dogfight. Other highlights of the 7 hour flying display included a French Air Force Alpha Jet and a colourful Belgian F-16.
Over 100,000 spectators attended over the weekend with around 60,000 on the Saturday alone. Sunday’s crowd numbers were slightly lower, perhaps due to the intense heat and the England-Germany World Cup Football Match. Mike was also kept busy driving a powerful Mercedes Benz ML350 for Brendan O’Brien’s Flying Circus trailer top landing stunt which was successfully completed on both days despite slight crosswinds and turbulence.
We must thank display organiser Colin Hitchins for the invite to display at this prestigious event and both Colin Short and Dick Happs for the loan of the glider.
Several people have asked about the music that accompanied Mike’s glider display on Saturday, Lead commentator Brendan O’Brien says it was – Ombra mai fù, an aria from Handel’s 1738 opera Serse. A stunning piece of music!
19/20th June gave both the Twister Duo and Swift Glider teams the biggest challenge yet, planning the logistics of 8 displays across the Fathers Day weekend.
Saturday started cool with a strong northerly wind, that extended the first positioning leg to Weston Park and the first of Mike Newman’s 5 hours on aerotow behind Ian Gallacher in the Pawnee.
Wrekin’s model show, now in its 20th year surpassed even last year’s show with some awesome models and more than 8000 spectators over the weekend. The highlight of the show was yet again Ali Mashinchy who flew several displays, including a vectored thrust Typhoon, a 175mph “Opus”
jet capable of pulling 40’g’ square corners and an enormous half scale model of our very own MDM-1 fox, complete with scale colour scheme.
The ‘Demolition Derby’ of a dozen warbirds models screaming around Weston Park’s mighty oaks was improved this year by pyrotechnics, bombs and triple ‘A’. It was a dual to the last one standing as in the 10 minute slot most of the fighters were lost to the pyros, trees, the ground or mid-air collisions.
After our first combined display with Twister Duo and Swift Team at Weston we took the transit down the Severn River to Kemble, and from the Cotswold Airshow, the wisters continued south to the Charity Sea Picnic on the Babbacombe Bay cliffs at Torquay whilst the Swift displayed at Sywell for the Blades.
Sunday by comparison was a relaxing schedule with only 2 venues. We started Fathers day with separate displays at Weston and enjoyed perfect airshow weather, with deep blue skies and light breezes. Kemble was just the same, with Guy taking over flying of the S1 Swift for the displays.
Huge thanks must to go to Mike Newman, who stepped up at the last moment to display and ferry the Swift, freeing up Guy to fly with the Twister Duo. Also to Steve Bishop at Weston Park, Glen Moreman at Kemble and Mark Cutmore at Sywell.
The Heart of Scotland Airshow held at Perth commemorated the 100 yrs anniversary of the first Scottish International Flight Meeting. The Red Arrows cancelled their participation after a training accident earlier in the year, and whilst Punchestown in Ireland cancelled their centenary celebrations, Gill Howie and her team soldiered on to organise a varied flying program with a good mix of RAF aircraft, vintage, home grown and display acts imported from across the boarder including the Brietling Wing Walkers and the Vacher Hurricane.
Paul Moslin was the tug driver for the weekend, Peter Wells and Guy Westgate ferried the Twister Duo north, leaving Mike Newman and Paul Johnson to drive the glider through the hours of jams and delays on the M6.
The flying started early at 11:00 with a 90 min lunch gap to allow pleasure flying from the airfield. Saturday’s display enjoyed almost perfect flying conditions – sunshine and bubbly cumulous giving the photographers some great backdrops.
An occluded weather front stubbornly hung along the spine of the Country on Sunday, delaying the start of flying with very low cloud and frequent showers. The Twister Duo kicked off proceedings with a flat display leaving Mike to complete the Swift display as cloudbase rose to the dizzy heights of 800ft. The front delayed many of the participants journeys home.
Thanks have to go to Gill Howie for the invitations. Fingers crossed for another show next year!
