Having done my first Royal International Air Tattoo back in 2006 and been impressed at the scale of it I’m surprised it took me so long to make a return visit. I have a feeling I may have considered 2008 but decided against it and as luck would have it the airshow was cancelled that year. I was however very jealous of the people who were already down there who got to see the F22 Raptor do it’s first public display in the UK on the Friday. I looked at some pics on the web and maybe a couple of short videos on YouTube and could not believe what I was missing!
The following year, often called 2009, I decided to get my ass to RIAT <to paraphrase Arnie>. Sadly I had recently separated from my long term girlfriend but we were still good friends and we agreed to still go down together as we’d attended a fair few shows over the years, including some awesome Elvington airshows and the first public display of the newly airworthy Vulcan at Waddington. We stayed at a campsite which I think may have been Flyby which seemed really nice until the utter c*nts over the hedge who seemingly resented the airshow and its campers played loud music all the way through until dawn in an effort to deliberately keep us awake.
Sunday morning came and we schlepped our way from Flyby to the Red entrance, I was still fuming from the dickheads keeping us up the night before and now lugging far too much stuff on shanks pony. My mood lifted a little though as I saw the array of BIG tail fins poking out of the statics. If you don’t get that childlike buzz when you see such things you’ve lost your airshow mojo! Looking back at my pics it seems we plotted up on the crowdline somewhere in Red.
By now I had upgraded my kit and was rocking a Canon 30D and a Canon 100-400mm lens which definitely made a big difference to my results. Yeah yeah, I hear you, you don’t need expensive kit to get good pictures blah blah, just need to have skill but c’mon – you try shooting a fast jet in the distance with a cheap 75mm-300mm zoom and a small buffer on your camera and you’ll soon find your limitations. For most of the Sunday it was dark and gloomy with sporadic rain, sometimes heavy with just the occasional glimpse of sunshine and blue skies. I was still learning how to shoot fully manual and it shows. I appear to have nailed my aperture down to F8 and that was that! Furthermore I seemed to have stayed on ISO 125 all day. Bearing in mind I was often at the long end of that 100-400mm you can imagine how dark my pics were, you can see I’ve really struggled. Back then my old copy of Photoshop CS-whatever had no fancy shadows/highlight tool either!
So actually I’m really enjoying going back through these old pics and bringing back to life some that I’d written off back then by using tools available in my contemporary version of Photoshop. Thanks the Lord I at least had the sense to shoot in RAW.
It looks like the opening act (or at least the first I shot) was a Spanish F-18. I didn’t take many photos, probably not helped by the gloominess. Several years later a Spanish F-18 put on one of the best airshow performances I’ve ever seen, completely outshone the Super Hornet that was also there! After the Hornet came what must have been my first time seeing the Italian Frecce Tricolori team and I really enjoyed their display. Just seeing something other than red Hawks made a nice change, in conjunction with the different coloured smoke, flamboyant showmanship and even more flamboyant commentary.
Again, interesting to revisit photos taken 14 years ago. Whilst tinkering with these I quickly realised my lens, or sensor, or both really were filthy as you will see in the comparison photos below. The dirty one I just deployed dehaze tool in extremis to really show the state of it
The Blue Eagles Army Air Corps helicopter display turned up with Lynx and Apache helicopters and looking back at my pictures the Lynx outshone the Apache in the air!
2009 RIAT also had a Rafale on the menu. Now, I’m not sure but I *think* this was the first time I saw the Rafale at an airshow. I remember seeing it in Take Off magazine in the very late 80s and thought it was a fine looking machine, especially in it’s prototype/pre-prod colours and yes, in the air it proved to be equally impressive but…but…I have never been able to pinpoint why…I just cannot get excited about any Rafale display! People rave about it…YEAH the Rafale’s coming! I always try and watch a Rafale performance with an open mind but I always come away underwhelmed. Does this make me some sort of monster?
2009 was the 100th anniversary of British naval aviation and they made a pretty good do of celebrating it at Fairford with a collection of rotary and fixed wing assets. Last time I saw something like this will have been Middle Wallop circa 1990.
A year after its return to flight we had the Vulcan back at RIAT. I’d last seen it at somewhere like Finningley or Church Fenton in the 90s when it had Goodbye written in the bomb bay. Back then it used to separate your ribs from their intercostal muscles on take off and never failed to impress. On it’s inaugural display in 2008 I’d hyped it up to myself and my girlfriend so much that maybe the actual display was a bit of an anti climax? That was more than made up for by the emotion of the event though, to be fair. The Vulcan at RIAT 2009 was a bit more pacey and seeing it tipped over almost upside down certainly got my attention! Over the years the Vulcan displayed we quickly became “experts” on the differences in how Rumens or Withers flew it. It certainly seemed to me that the former would go for the more jaw dropping performances whereas the latter would showcase his restrained precision. I feel like I could write a lot about the Vulcan right now but I think I’ll save it for another post.
Not only did we get to see the Vulcan getting put through its paces but as an extra bonus it taxied along the runway with a B52 as well. I’ve left the photo deliberately as is (i.e. too dark) as a reminder that this RIAT was pretty dark and moody!
It looks like the final display I took pictures of was Typhoon ZJ924 which got a dramatic take off from the rain soaked runway and also benefited from the moisture heavy air. I will not be calling this ‘spluff’, but there you have it, call it what you will, it’s all over the wings :-D.
RIAT 2009 might not have been perfect but ultimately I really enjoyed it and rather than leaving it another 3 years before returning, I was back the following year. The seed was definitely planted by now! I have subsequently done every show from 2009 onwards apart from 2011 and 2013. Not sure what put me off those years, it will either have been a clash with something else or a poor line up for my tastes. Nowadays I am of the opinion that line up doesn’t matter too much, just go to the bloody airshow and enjoy it for what it is. One day, there won’t be any. Besides, an aeroplane you may be blasé about because you’ve seen it countless times can pull something out of the hat at its next airshow and knock your socks of!!