Wings And Wheels Show

Sorry bud, am fully booked down in Hampshire

 

Love airshows! If I can get up a good head of steam and a long enough ramp I'll be there.

My youngest, Abby, and I went to the Atlantic City Airshow the week before last. Nice day on the beach. Not too hot and a bit of a breeze. Enjoyable. Love the vintage warbirds, the Army Golden Knights parachute team and the acrobatic stunt flyers. Watching the Harrier do its thing was cool (Thank you for that bit of hardware, Britain). All good but, the USAF Thunderbirds were what we were waiting for. They were scheduled for 2:45 p.m. They hadn't started by 3:15. Abby had her phone tuned to the local station broadcasting the event. It was too hazy. They kept putting off the start time. We finally gave up and left at 4:00. Later we heard they finally flew at 4:30, but it was an abbreviated performance.

 

Sounds interesting. I used to take my sons to the Woodford air shows when they were little. Sadly the air shows are long gone. Wouldn't mind getting to this show though, depends how I'm feeling, my health isn't too good at the moment.

 

That sounds like an amazing event a the Avro Aircraft Museum. The combination of classic planes, cars, and bikes along with the artisan market, food, drink, and live music, sounds like a perfect weekend plan. And a Lancaster flyover on both days? That’s definitely something not to be missed. I wish I could join you.

 

I've managed to clear the work decks a little, so I'll be there for the Saturday morning hopefully I won't miss the fly past.

 

I could only get the morning off so a lovely ride this morning to the "Wings and Wheels" show at the Avro museum in Woodford. Fog came in about 2 miles into the ride and of course I hadn't got my V wipe because its going to be the hottest day this year so far, so slow down and ride with the visor up (trying not to remember a forum post a year or so ago about what a stray stone would do to an unprotected eye!).

Got there at opening time and there were already a fair view visitors, a volunteer in a Hi-Viz vest comes up to me and he asks "are you wanting to park with the exhibition bikes?" (I'm flattered) I reply "No I'm just visiting". And the following conversation goes like this.

"Well the car park is all the way down there (he points along way down the service road and its already hot) and it'll be a lot cheaper in the exhibitor area."

"I've already paid on line but I was planning on leaving the helmet on the bike so how do we get in to the exhibitor area."

"Just go down to the next gate and the guy in the Hi-Viz vest will let you in and tell you where to park"

Followed the instructions and found myself parking next to a mint T-Reg Yamaha RD400 just by where they would later run up a WW2 era radial engine.



Just after taking this photo @beerkat arrived, so we had a quick introductory chat, his bike looks at least as good in the flesh as the photos he's shared in this forum and sounds as good as well.

Colin and I started to mooch around the museum and parked cars and bikes, watched the engine run and then availed ourselves of a ham and cheese crepe and a coffee from one of the onsite vendors. We found much needed shade on a couple of chairs under the enormous wings of a Vulcan bomber standing outside museum just in time to watch a fly over by an American WW2 2 seater trainer which just happened to be the same one we saw take off at Sleape Airfield on or ride out to Shropshire a week or so ago. (That post is a couple of pages back)

More mooching around other halls and bits of aircraft, serenaded by 40's music, chatted with a few car and bike owners and by 1:00pm its getting scorchio and definitely time to ride home and get out of bike gear that is simply too hot for 30+Centigrade weather and get back to work.

Great day and I hope you've all had equally good days doing whatever you've had to and hopefully that's involved two wheels.

 

Now I'm just jealous. I was vainly hoping it might make it over to my side of Cheshire but evidently not. They are a beautiful aircraft and those Merlin engines just sound perfect.

 

The way car drivers rubber neck it wouldn't be safe, especially with all the "Cheshire Tractors" in the area. Also the Hawker Hunter crash onto an A -road in Hampshire a few years ago has made show organisers very cautious.

But surely there could have been a gap in the Manchester air traffic for the Red Arrows to fly through with Red, White and Blue smoke, and hopefully for less than £10,000; after all they were in the area.

 

The Red Arrows flew past my house yesterday at 16:25. They were due to fly by again today round about the same time but I'd gone to watch Oldham Atletic v Dorking Wanderers, a huge mistake as it was as boring as it gets.

 

Sounds like an awesome event. Have a blast at the 'Wings and Wheels' show and enjoy the Lancaster flyover.