I am compiling this blog post about RIAT 2023 3 2 1 week before I hopefully go to RIAT 2024 which tells you how little spare time I have for blog posting, especially as I also run a fly fishing blog as well. Last year was a bit of a crazy one and not necessarily for the right reasons. The weather was downright appalling for mid July and finally finished off our trusty Outwell Carolina S tent after about 13 years of incredible service, as well as ruining the Friday airshow. What’s more, the campsite we were staying at also had some carryings on in the night about which I shall talk more about later. I realise that blog posts are meant to be short and snappy but that’s not how I roll, this is an attempt to share the full experience and also act as an aide de memoire for when I get older and start forgetting everything 😀

As per our routine for the past few years we arrived at Kempsford campsite on the Thursday afternoon and pitched in the back field. We put up our trusty Outwell tent which had been temporarily retired in 2020 when we decided it was too small for us now we had a child but quickly put back into service when its so called replacement, an Outwell air tent, failed spectacularly. The weather was nice that evening and as always we started to soak up the airshow vibe from the other side of the fence as it were.

We eventually headed to the controversial ‘Naffy bar’ housed in a renovated vintage dodgem track which this year replaced the traditional marquee tent. I was very sceptical of this setup as it seemed vulnerable to horizontal rain but bearing in mind the torrential downpours and wind we had over the weekend it performed just fine so proving I’m just a cantankerous twat resistant to literally any change to my routine.

Friday

To try and make RIAT as expensive as possible for ourselves, I get a selfish daddy FRIAT ticket whilst my partner and son get Family enclosure. I also buy family enclosure just so I can move between the FRIAT enclosure and my family! I normally head in just before 9am to make use of the priority FRIAT entrance into Blue – honestly, this was one of the main reasons we started using to FRIAT, to avoid the horrendous early morning queue. Please don’t take this away from us RIAT!! Anyway, this year there didn’t seem much point in rushing so we all had breakfast in the NAFI. Why no rush? See the historic weather data for Fairford over the RIAT weekend.

Friday’s weather was shockingly bad. Torrential rain with strong winds pretty much all day. But we made our way into the airshow and made the best of it. Amusingly, FRIAT ponchos which I’ve always turned my nose up suddenly seemed like a damn fine idea but they had become much sought after items. Pretty sure it would have been easier to get hold of a bag of marching powder than FRIAT ponchos and I didn’t manage to get us all kitted out with them until Saturday. Some marching powder might have helped me get through the day actually….

I hit the FRIAT merch but got confused that they no longer sold Men’s T shirts, only Unisex, Ladies and Kids. I decided I wasn’t keen on the traditional blue one that I’ve bought every year and went for the white one.

Of course, now I stare longingly at my son’s blue RIAT 24 T shirt and wish I’d not been such a fucking crank about it. I also pick up my complimentary RIAT 2023 souvenir programme. I dread to think what these cost to buy – no where else would you spend a tenner or so on a magazine with more adverts than content and surprisingly naff photos (some, not all).

I’m not sure I even went in the FRIAT stand on the Monday. Instead we wandered from one sheltered area to another. I nipped out to shoot the Danish F16 which I really wanted to see but it was a struggle with the ever present risk of getting my camera gear wet and writing off the rest of the airshow!

The SAAB 105 also went up and did a very graceful display despite the conditions. These were the only 2 machines I shot in the air on the Friday, that’s how futile it all seemed. I just caught the back end of the C135 flypast but didn’t get any photos – just watching a video of it now on Youtube – it looked very sporty!

The clip below was shot from the back of an A400M and gives you a bit of an idea on how bad conditions were.

Below is a soggy Hawk TMk2, shot as we were making the trudge back to Blue because we’d stuck it out for long enough!

Back at Kempsford the rain was taking its toll. I was very glad we’d arrived the night before when the field was nice and dry because now the whole place was a quagmire.

Just going to the toilets was a mission and I’m pretty sure some people never made it out of the mud but their corpses did at least help to provide some stability underfoot.

There was much doom and gloom on the Uk Airshow Review Forum about the Saturday show. It’s a litany of middle aged foot stamping temper tantrums, feverish excitement, and Johnny Nice Painter levels of despair. And that’s just me! Many were predicting the Saturday would be cancelled due to high winds and more rain, proclaiming there was no point in setting off from home. Thank God for the bar.

Saturday

Bastard! We awoke to discover our trusty old tent was properly leaking in both the porch and the bedroom. Luckily we had brought a spare ’emergency tent’ with us so we put that up and transferred my girlfriend and son’s gear into that whilst I stayed in the old one.

The weather was miles better on the Saturday. Inside the showground what a difference it made to be able to walk around without feeling cold and wet, peering out of rain soaked and/or steamed up glasses.

I was also back in the FRIAT stand today, sat with all the other guys like me sporting dad bods and floppy sun hats, chimping away after every pass. Ah it’s good to be back. The opening act today was the Spanish display team in their diminutive but brightly painted Aviojets. They are very photogenic and can really brighten up a show, I always take the time to get some shots of them

After the Spaniards came the Finnish F18. I’ve said it elsewhere but the old F18 puts on a much better show than the Super Hornet, no matter who is flying it. Not sure why this would be the case but it just is!

The SAAB was on again today and this time it was displaying in the sunshine which made for a much more pleasing experience for both spectators and presumably pilot!

One thing that RIAT does well is unique formations of aircraft and this year was no exception. I wonder if I’ll ever see a Harrier/Matador alongside an F35 again? What an absolutely glorious racket these 2 made – the tortured protestations emanating from the F35’s Pratt & Whitney engine accompanied by the wholesome roar of the Matador’s Pegasus. If that doesn’t get your dander up I don’t know what will.

I have to be careful here, I can’t cover off every display over the whole weekend, plus departures so I really need to wind this in a bit and focus on my highlights but there were so many! So let’s bypass the Rafale, everyone’s favourite apart from me…why oh why can’t I get aroused by the Rafale – is there something wrong with me? I actually prefer the Gripen and speaking of which I managed to capture a cool shot of the Czech example having either some sort of engine surge or taking out a bird

Back to dynamic pairings and here we have a simulated in flight refuelling between C130 and Osprey, another nice addition to RIAT 2023. Of course, the theme for RIAT 2023 was SKYTANKER!

Gonna skip the Belgian F16, maybe I’ll pick it up in Sunday’s scribblings, and instead move onto a star item for me, the Augusta A129 Mangusta. Ever since I saw it in Take Off magazine in the 80s I’ve been fascinated by it’s shape, not quite as cool as the Apache but still a serious looking machine but with a certain Italian panache.I believe I was in the Family Enclosure at this point, spending time with …my family! It’s not a bad spot to be in, you get a different view of the airshow and still benefit from not fighting lumps down on the crowdline. ” ‘scuse me can my child just squeeze in front of you?” ” Yeah sure mate of course….oh look now you are standing in front of me as well, isn’t that great”

The Family Enclosure was however missing a vital component, the coffee stall! The vendors looked to have decided to abandon the stall due to the weather. Must have been bad as I imagine they will have paid a fortune to be there.

Anyway, enough Mongoose madness. What did we have next…RAF Voyager with Finnish F18. Nice combo. Good chance I’ll never see that again so let’s have a photo in the blog post.

A400 goes up, always an impressive take off. Then we got ze pair of Deutsche Luftwaffe Tornados taking off and making a fantastic racket, a noise we used to take for granted

Whilst the Tornados buggered off to go form up with the A400 we had a solo from the Spanish Navy Matador. Ooh I do like to see some tasty LERXs

After the Harrier, sorry I mean Matador, the A400 came in dragging the 2 x Tornados behind it to give us a couple of passes before the Saudis went up in there Hawks. Interestingly, I seem to have stopped taking photos of the flying display after the Saudi display team. I do like the Saudi Hawks, worth it just to see a load of green Hawks but they do put on a good show.

I did get some nice static shots through the day as well. I must confess, some of my personal highlights of the statics were the beautiful Fiat G46s, I’ve never seen one before in the flesh and they too were star items in my book.

We also got a gaily painted AMX from 51° Stormo of the Italian Air Force. The Italians have been really good supporters of RIAT from my limited experience, sending some niche aeroplanes over and also putting on superb displays. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – some of the best / most exciting Tonka displays I’ve ever seen have been put on by the Italians. Especially the one that got all out of shape over the crowdline a few years ago :-D. Ugh, I still shudder though when I recall the time when I thought the Italian A200 displaying at RIAT was an ADV variant when in fact they’d stopped using it about 10 years previously. I think I even described it as such out aloud :-(. A little out of date aviation knowledge is a dangerous thing! These are the things that wake me up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.

The Hellenic Air Force once again sent a Phantom, what an absolute beast the F4 is. It would have been nice to have seen one display during my lifetime but alas it is not to be. Just glad to see them take off and land.

One of the interesting aspects of taking a child to an airshow is their excitement at going inside the statics where allowed. I used to turn my nose up at that sort of thing but priorities very quickly change with fatherhood! And surprise surprise it’s actually quite interesting to be inside these things! Between the 2 of us we took him on several aircraft but the stellar take home factoid for me was the 2 giant glorified Thermos flasks in the back of the Osprey.

Saturday evening we hit the Kempsford amenities for some food and a couple of beverages. Things are improving on the campsite and it looks less like a First World War battlefield. Wy look, there’s even a rainbow!

By the way, the catering at Kempsford has been really good these past 2 years. Expensive, but proper tasty food regardless of which vendor you go to. In fact catering per se has come on a lot over the years! After a good night we retired to the tents (remember I’m in the big old family tent and partner and son separated into the smaller backup tent). I think I had nodded off but was awoken by a commotion quite some way away. The gist of it was some folks were rightly pissed off that a man had tried to break into their tent and then their camper van. One of them stormed off to get security. Fuck sake, there’s always something. As I try to get back off to sleep I hear footsteps heading away from the commotion and towards our tent then stop right outside my tent door. The same crank is now standing outside my tent and a few feet away from the one with my girlfriend and son inside. I shout out that he needs to go away, now. He doesn’t. So I get out and ask again and again and again that he fucks off but he refuses so I have to take a firmer approach to remove him from anywhere near my family. To this day I’ll never know if he was a thief, a wandering rapist or just a someone out of his mind on drugs and/or booze. I’d like to think it was the latter which is still hardly ideal but a bit less sinister.

It took a long long time for me to settle down after that unpleasant situation and a shit night’s sleep followed, what little remained. Thank FRIAT I could have a lie in and waltz up just before 9 and use our dedicated entrance. An entrance they have now taken away from us for 2024 which is a real, real kick in the nuts.

Sunday

Ah back in the stand again! I love the camaraderie of the FRIAT stand, you always get talking to strangers and each day you bump into them you have more to discuss. I’m still writing this post on the 10th July and just heard that for 2025 the FRIAT stand will be further back from the crowdline and shifted to the side a bit. Another kick in the nuts for FRIAT members! So, no dedicated entrance and a badly positioned stand to look forward to. What next? Bleach in our eyes and SD cards confiscated?

I have my old Lowe Alpine AWII Pro camera bag with me again for RIAT 2023, it was a present many many years ago and is a treasured possession. It comes with a detachable bag which I can take into the stands whilst dropping the main carcass off with the FRIAT left luggage facility. After about 15 years the straps have started to fray and I thought I’d have to retire it but found an identical bag for £40 off Ebay and robbed it for spares. The donor bag was missing a few bits and the seller probably thought he’d get some shitty feedback from me but I was over the moon to get the bits I needed to get my bag operational again! I hear myself typing this and realise I am very, very boring old man….

Another day with my homies in the FRIAT stand. I start the day’s flying photography with Saudi Hawks again! Nice colourful start to the day and the weather is pretty decent, in fact magnificent in comparison to Friday.

Following on from the Hawks I shoot the Swedish Gripen. I kinda blow hot and cold with the Gripen, I don’t dislike it in any way shape or form but it’s quite small and doesn’t have the same presence of the bigger jets but when it’s flown well it can really impress. Ha.Flown well… like I have any right to pass judgement on someone’s flying skills!

Next up on my SD card it’s the Chinook. My current fad is trying to shoot with as slow a shutter speed as possible to try get a rotor disk. Hell, it’s hard enough to get motion blur on the blades without camera shake, never mind full disk! This photo was at 1/160

This next one was instead taken at 1/60, I’ve tweaked the contrast etc just to show to effect the marginal increase in rotor blur. Lord knows what I’d need to get full disc – probably more chance getting it when the helicopter is climbing steeply with presumably more power and faster blades??

I may as well stick in a photo of the Typhoon, I do like Blackjack, it’s a good scheme and means I have more chance of getting a half decent shot because…contrast.

Yup, can’t really fail to get a good pic of that machine can you….

I do like watching the F35 hover, it does seem incredibly stable. My gut reaction was that all those bells and whistles controlling the F35’s manoeuvres made it very vulnerable to falling out of the sky the moment something goes wrong. True, there have been 10 confirmed destroyed F35s as of November 2023, that’s actually a lot more than I realised however when you look at the number of Harriers lost in service the F35 has a long way to go to reach a similarly eye watering loss ratio.

I used the video function on my 7DMk2 to capture the Matador hovering. Having video was a bonus selling point for me but I was a bit gutted to later discover you couldn’t film through the viewfinder, you had to use the rear LCD. I’ve never been blown away at the video quality either but in the clip below, Clipchamp and Youtube have made it look like it was filmed on a Y2K VGA camcorder!

Speaking of hovery things, I saw my first HH-139B , in service with the Italian Air Force after the F35 had finished its routine. It’s used for combat search and rescue (CSAR) operations. You know what, that is a handsome looking machine. It’s a derivative of the AW139 and I’m just reading up about the 139 now and am surprised to discover that there is a production line for it in Russia?! . Wonder how that is working out nowadays?

Ah ok I remember this next sequence. I had come to meet my girlfriend and son somewhere between FRIAT and Family enclosure when the Gripen E went up, I’d been very much looking forward to seeing this. I was quite a way back from the crowdline but tried to get some photos of it when my son suddenly decided to put on an impromptu air display with his toy Red Arrows Hawk especially for daddy. My heart swelled with pride as I concentrated on his little show and did a pretty good job of ignoring the the brand new 4.5th (!) generation fighter behind him 🙂

As luck would have it, when my son’s performance came to its conclusion I managed to then get some shots of the Gripen E so it was win win. That is the best looking Gripen I’ve ever seen by the way.

I think I was still somewhere between the 2 locations when I shot the Al Fursan (“The Knights”) display team from UAE. These guys always look good! Again, whilst reading up on them for this blog post I discover that they have 7 jets to represent the 7 Emirates that make up UAE. How’s about that for an interesting fact eh?!

One of the star items at RIAT2023 was the Me262. Now, don’t get me wrong, it was a fantastic addition to the airshow and I know many people were over the moon to see it but for me personally it’s just a replica. A replica that does not have the original powerplant in it. Very much aware why that would be the case but it just meant I wasn’t that giddy. Do I sound like a bit of an ungrateful ****? I probably do don’t I. Anyway, I still made damn sure I got plenty of photos. It must have absolutely blown people’s minds when they saw it for the first time back in the 40s, it really was a whole new generation of fighting machine.

Staying down the far end I shot the B52 as it took off. What an absolute unit that thing is, it’s immense. It’s crackers to think that when they finally do retire they will have been in front line service for nearly a hundred years.

As the B52 lumbered off to hold, we got another unique flypast with a Gripen flying alongside the RAF Voyager.

The Tonkas were up again as well, were they going home? Can’t recall now but was nice to capture them together in formation. Interesting photo below, presumably the lower machine is a bit blurry because more DoF was needed? EXIF below.

Speaking of camera settings, does anyone else shoot full manual? It’s the only way I seem to get what I want but I feel like I should persevere more with using Av as that seems to be a more popular setting.

What shall I include next? Ah yes the Italian Typhoon. If you recall I made the bold statement that I prefer the Italian Tornado displays well guess what, I sometimes feel the same about their Typhoon displays! However I have seen some really good RAF Typhoon displays, I think there was an absolute precision pearler at Cosford a year or two back so it’s a close run thing.

The weather had turned pretty wet again by now but it didn’t stop this KC135 from flying through the clag

Nor did it stop the B52 from doing its flypast, for many a star item of the show! I love the B52, I really do and it never fails to stop me in my tracks but I always find myself wishing it was a bit lower!

I think at this point time was marching on and we wanted to pick up the statics one last time before leaving the showground. According to my pic data we were there for another 2 and a half hours perusing the statics but I’m not sure that’s right?

This guy with his U2 was sound and we would have spoken to him more, particularly my little boy, but some bloke pushed in and started talking over us so that was that.

A favourite item of mine in the static was the German Army CH53. The thing just oozes brute force and massive power. I was lucky enough to catch it on departures the following day as well

We must have got back to the campsite about 7pm, fully airshow’d out but in a good way. There’s always a strange mix of melancholy and fatigue as you make that walk back into Kempsford on the Sunday. You’ve kinda had enough but you don’t want it to be over. Yes there’s still departures but it doesn’t have the same atmosphere as the full blown air show days. Many people buy FRIAT purely for the arrivals and departures and can’t face being on the showground Fri – Sun which seems bonkers to me, I love the whole buzz on those days.

We enjoyed our last night on Kempsford with a few more beers in the dodgem bar followed by a couple more back at the tent. Gone have the days pre-parenthood where we’d get shitfaced in the marquee, staying to the bitter end listening to the live bands! This picture I think does a great job of summing up the RIAT/Kempsford vibe. Chilling at the bar, watching the sun go down over silhouetted fins.

Monday

Departures day. Wake up sore from several nights camping. You look outside and the campsite is half empty and getting emptier by the minute. The chemical bogs are also starting to disappear, and the ones that remain often have no soap or toilet roll so you must go armed with your own supplies. No mega rush so time for breakfast at the tent as you watch and listen as Fairford comes back to life again but this time it’s back to being an airbase albeit a very, very busy one. Then it’s time to make that last walk in to get escorted across the airfield into FRIAT, grab a coffee and a bacon sarnie for second breakfast and join your fellow aviation fanatics up in the stands. We are the people who beam with excitement when a jet takes off and stays low, or tips its wings momentarily to give us a glorious topside. Simple pleasures! An array of bright red arms belonging to men let loose for a week without their partners to remind them to deploy the sun cream cradle thousands, even tens of pounds worth of cameras and lens. It always amuses me to watch the FRIAT stands when something good is happening and witness a sea of L series glass swing across in unison.

The future of FRIAT is not looking good with the changes that have already happened (price increases), those that are set to happen this year (no dedicated entrance from Blue, no dedicated FRIAT security Q) and next year’s changes (moving the sodding grandstand further away from the flying). I was pretty late to the FRIAT party but it was a total game changer and it’s a real shame to watch its decline into who knows what. I shall try stay positive, the people at the pointy end of FRIAT are still passionate about doing the best they can for us Avgeeks so let’s see what happens

I won’t bother to write too much around the departures, just putting up some of my favourites. Earlier in this post I made reference to the Rafale leaving me pretty cold when displaying but what I will say is that they make for some of the best departure shots. Also, as a little bonus the Greek Phantom came back after French ATC sent it back for some reason 😀

Considering the inclement weather, RIAT 2023 was still awesome. You have to endure the bad days to truly enjoy the good days, as they say. Bit of a shame about the unpleasant happenings on Kempsford. It’s ironic that I do a fair amount of wild camping on my own out in very remote wilderness where you can sometimes momentarily get ‘the fear’ about mad axemen etc but actually, it’s the big family campsites you have to worry about. Stick a thousand or so people in a couple of fields, fill half of them up with booze, soak them in water for a day then bake in sun for 48 hours and you have a recipe for madness!

This post is written by a mildly jaded middle aged man who lives in the past. Perhaps the most important review should be written by my 5 year old son who had a whale of a time. The Red Arrows were a firm favourite, as were the other display teams. And he got to go inside the Osprey and an A400, ate ice cream and got bought several toys and came away very happy indeed.