Midlands Air Festival 2019
Posted: Mon May 20, 2019 10:52 am
Show debrief #2 of the year.
Yesterday I attended the final day of the Midlands Air Festival. It's a three-day event featuring day and evening air displays and mass hot air balloon launches featuring around 100 balloons. Unfortunately I was only able to watch the Sunday daytime flying display, arriving ten minutes before it started and leaving immediately after.
The event was first held last year at Ragley Hall, and this year moved to Arbury Hall, another stately home. As before, some aircraft flew from the gardens of the home, others used nearby airports. The new venue is facing into the sun, like the old one, but isn't quite so charming - the long crowdline made the audience look quite thinly-spread, and you're looking up a hill at some trees, rather than down into a hilly valley. It definitely feels more like standing in an ordinary field than in the gardens of a country house. The weather also wasn't ideal - mostly grey and overcast, which never makes an airshow look its best.
The flying display was very 'gappy' with five minute gaps between most acts, sometimes as much as 15 minutes. Most of what we saw were smaller aircraft, especially in the first half of the programme, like a Chipmunk pair, SA180 Twister, Piper Cub, Marchetti SF260, Auster AOP6 and so on. Perhaps as a result, it seemed to me that a lot of spectators actually left quite early in the day. Having said that, there were some fantastic displays, especially in the second half of the flying display. The Westland Wasp put on a nice (if rather distant) show and then landed just a few metres in front of the crowd, Bob Grimstead performed a lovely routine in his RF-4 motorglider and I also enjoyed the Sea Fury/Mustang pair, who flew plenty of formation topside passes. Hats off, too, to the crew of the An-2 that dropped the Red Devils, who did a lovely low flypast after take-off, below treetop height.
There were two big formation teams, both of which were fantastic. The hugely-underrated Stampe Formation Flying Team staged a nice four-ship routine followed by an enjoyable solo display from Chris Jessons - those things do moves a 1930s biplane shouldn't be capable of! Then we had the five RV-8s of Team Raven, probably the stars of the show. While most RV teams just do non-aerobatic flypasts and turns in different formations, Team Raven do a proper jet team-style aerobatic show with a seamless routine of formation loops, rolls, bomb bursts, an opposition pass and more. I particularly loved 'The Twizzles' - the aircraft climb in Echelon and rapidly roll under the formation at one-second intervals.
Neither of the two jet displays flew on Sunday. The Strikemaster pair (sadly downgraded to a Jet Provost solo in the days before the show) and a rare air display from the Folland Gnat, but neither displayed with no explanation given that I heard. I was in front of the barriers all day so it's possible it was mentioned while I was out of earshot of the speakers.
Overall the show didn't seem to have the magic of last year (having said that, I was only there for five hours, so who am I to comment?) but I do hope it continues to grow. It's a nice event, and with a slightly faster-paced flying display, a bigger crowd and perhaps a move back to Ragley Hall, it will become a much-loved event, I am sure.
Video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bkm8aFKcM8
Yesterday I attended the final day of the Midlands Air Festival. It's a three-day event featuring day and evening air displays and mass hot air balloon launches featuring around 100 balloons. Unfortunately I was only able to watch the Sunday daytime flying display, arriving ten minutes before it started and leaving immediately after.
The event was first held last year at Ragley Hall, and this year moved to Arbury Hall, another stately home. As before, some aircraft flew from the gardens of the home, others used nearby airports. The new venue is facing into the sun, like the old one, but isn't quite so charming - the long crowdline made the audience look quite thinly-spread, and you're looking up a hill at some trees, rather than down into a hilly valley. It definitely feels more like standing in an ordinary field than in the gardens of a country house. The weather also wasn't ideal - mostly grey and overcast, which never makes an airshow look its best.
The flying display was very 'gappy' with five minute gaps between most acts, sometimes as much as 15 minutes. Most of what we saw were smaller aircraft, especially in the first half of the programme, like a Chipmunk pair, SA180 Twister, Piper Cub, Marchetti SF260, Auster AOP6 and so on. Perhaps as a result, it seemed to me that a lot of spectators actually left quite early in the day. Having said that, there were some fantastic displays, especially in the second half of the flying display. The Westland Wasp put on a nice (if rather distant) show and then landed just a few metres in front of the crowd, Bob Grimstead performed a lovely routine in his RF-4 motorglider and I also enjoyed the Sea Fury/Mustang pair, who flew plenty of formation topside passes. Hats off, too, to the crew of the An-2 that dropped the Red Devils, who did a lovely low flypast after take-off, below treetop height.
There were two big formation teams, both of which were fantastic. The hugely-underrated Stampe Formation Flying Team staged a nice four-ship routine followed by an enjoyable solo display from Chris Jessons - those things do moves a 1930s biplane shouldn't be capable of! Then we had the five RV-8s of Team Raven, probably the stars of the show. While most RV teams just do non-aerobatic flypasts and turns in different formations, Team Raven do a proper jet team-style aerobatic show with a seamless routine of formation loops, rolls, bomb bursts, an opposition pass and more. I particularly loved 'The Twizzles' - the aircraft climb in Echelon and rapidly roll under the formation at one-second intervals.
Neither of the two jet displays flew on Sunday. The Strikemaster pair (sadly downgraded to a Jet Provost solo in the days before the show) and a rare air display from the Folland Gnat, but neither displayed with no explanation given that I heard. I was in front of the barriers all day so it's possible it was mentioned while I was out of earshot of the speakers.
Overall the show didn't seem to have the magic of last year (having said that, I was only there for five hours, so who am I to comment?) but I do hope it continues to grow. It's a nice event, and with a slightly faster-paced flying display, a bigger crowd and perhaps a move back to Ragley Hall, it will become a much-loved event, I am sure.
Video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bkm8aFKcM8