Waddington's Heat Wave : The Flying Display

The two days at Waddington couldn't be have been any hotter. In fact it was almost too uncortfortable at times. The clear skies and almost unlimited airspace allowed everyone to do their full displays under blue skies. Waddington struggled though to attract international military particpation this year, so how did the flying display turn out? Paul Johnson/Flightline UK reports. All Photography copyright of the Author.

It's fair to say Waddington got some criticism this year for the flying display thanks largely due to an unfortunate clash with two other major international military airshows held in Belgium and France. In effect this ruled out participation from both this countries, both of which usually are strong supporters of UK airshows. The close proximity of the event again to RIAT two weeks later also means several acts were unavailable to Waddington.

Therefore Waddington really needed to find alternative displays to make up for the fact it couldn't rely on foreign military support. This mainly came from the UK based civilian display circuit, particularly the aerobatic displays. The newest of these are the Blades from 2Excel Aviation who have three ex Red Arrows in the team and draw heavily on that experience with several parts of the show that will be familiar to anyone who has seen the Reds. Biggest of the civilian teams currently on the circuit are the Aerostars flying six Yak-50s, though on Saturday a Super Yak-52 led the formation. In fact, Russian unlimited aerobatic was abundant at Waddington. The Red Bull Matadors gave there usual eyeopening duo display performing aerobatics you just don't see anyone else do while Will Curtis completed another busy weekend of displays at Waddington (he didn't even land once at Waddington!) in his Su-26M2. Balancing out the bias towards Eastern European aerobatic types was one further Extra 300L in the hands of John Taylor from Ultimate High putting on a superb solo display. A team that always provides a display with a difference are the Utterly Butterly Barnstormers with their pair of Stearman biplanes. Wingwalkers Sarah Tanner and Lucy Foster certainly had a brief rest from the searing heat during their display!!

With the 70th Anniversary of the Spitfire, it's natural that the RAF's premier show had some sort of special display to mark the occasion. The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight flew a formation of Lancaster, Spitfire IIa and Spitfire PR19 for the event and were joining by former BBMF Boss, Sqn Ldr Paul Day in Maurice Bayliss' Spitfire Tr.9 which performed a solo and in formation with the BBMF spitfires.

As as already been said, foreign military participation was very difficult to come by for this years Waddington. The only European fast jet display in the flying programme was the Austrian Air Force's SAAB 105OE which is quite a decent performer despite it's looks. It's even more powerful than a Hawk on paper and certain makes enough noise for itself.

The Royal New Zealand Air Force provided two rarely seen displays for Waddington. The Boeing 757 has already been seen at Kemble Air Day this year and as ever provided a dramatic display. Perhaps it was the heat, or maybe just the huge arena but the display simply didn't seem as dramatic as it's Kemble appearance. It also nearly missed the display suffering a problem en route to Waddington in Hawaii which delayed it's arrival until late on Friday night. The reason we have seen the 757 at two shows this year has been largely due to the RNZAF's participation in the Fincastle Trophy at Kinloss which is a Maritime exercise. Joining the 757 at Waddington was the RNZAF P-3K Orion which has been a participant in that exercise and again put on an excellent display for such a heavy aircraft. P-3 displays are a rarity in this country so to have such a well traveled one return is always good.

The bulk of the display programme was as  you would expect formed from displays from the UK Armed Forces. The Army Air Corps were represented by the Blue Eagles who have a new and quite entertaining display for 2006 including some helicopter dogfighting. The Royal Navy had the Black Cats on display with their usual aerial ballet. The rest of the display was all from the Royal Air Force. Standing out and winning the prize for best presented display was the Canberra PR9 which is making three or four aircraft appearances before the type is withdrawn from service at the end of the month. It's a shame that it couldn't have done a full year of displays as it's an excellent display that defies the age of the aircraft. The battlefield helicopters, Merlin HC3 and Chinook HC2, once again put on excellent displays as did the Tucano T1 and in particular the Tutor T1 which is almost displaying the same level of aerobatics as performed by the Sukhois! The RAF fast jets were represented by Typhoon F2, Tornado GR4 and Hawk T1. The Harrier GR7 made brief appearances each day suffering some major problems with some navigation systems. Also suffering on Saturday was the Hercules C5 which had a generator failure towards the end of his display and landed with only three engines. Some major shifting of the static park and re-roleing  Even the RAF Falcons didn't escape as their jumpship went tech at Brize and took a lot of work to get it back for Sundays flying!! As ever, it was the Red Arrows that were the stars for most of the crowd. The full 2006 display certainly delivers with a number of pleasing formations, loops, rolls and daring crosses.

The flying display may have disappointed the military enthusiasts, and been a little repetitive with the number of aerobatic types, but still delivered a good six hours of entertainment with the crowd containing enjoying enough daring, noise and smoke to satisfy most. We even got two decent hearts from the arrows in gin blue skies!

Part One : The Static Displays

Part Two : The Flying Display

 copyright Flightline UK