Went to Biggin Hill Air Fair today, which is local to where I live. A great day and generally good weather. The downside was that the recently restored Vulcan went u/s, as did the Lancaster. :cry: But a flypast by a Virgin Atlantic 747 with the Red Arrows in formation pretty well compensated. And there was plenty more to see, such as a decent WW1 dogfight, with at least nine different aeroplanes. There were some amazing aerobatics by several teams, especially the Matador team of Sukhoi 26s flown by Red Bull Air Race competitors. There was a Douglas Skyraider, and the recently restored Hawker Nimrod - not the maritime patrol jet, but the biplane fighter which was the naval version of the Hawker Fury: far more interesting! The show culminated in Spitfire MH434, Ray Hanna's old mount, being flown by John Romaine, to the strains of the Last Post and Jerusalem over the speakers. This was partly as a contribution to the newly-instigated Armed Forces Day, and is an encouraging development - I don't think such a display of patriotism would have been allowed a few years ago. I got some decent footage on my camcorder, half an hours worth. If any of you want to see it I can post a CD-R to you once I've downloaded it. You'll have to PM me with your home address - I don't think there is a more high-tech way of transmitting a half-hour video. (As this is an open forum, I'd better limit this offer to Regulars!). As far as stills cameras are concerned, I only have a compact digital, which for air displays is only any good for anything large and slow. But I did get a decent shot of the 747 doing a "dirty" flypast - attached.
Lucky blighter. It sounds like a perfect day. And the Vulcan didn't fly? Now there's a ruddy surprise!! But a real pity the Lanc didn't show. As for the footage. Adrian, do you use XP or Vista? Actually, makes no difference. Both should be bundled with Windows Movie Maker. If you load up the film onto that, and then edit it into three 10 minute clips, then you could load them up on youtube. Or for more privacy, you can load them onto photobucket (though you may need to break up a 30 min clip as I cannot remeber the file size limit) and then just send the links to those select few you wish to share the film with
Nice pic Adrian. You doing Waddington next weekend? I'm there and got all 8GB of memory cards cleared and formatted ready
The camcorder uses something called Image Mixer with VCD, for loading from tape onto the PC. There is an editing function but it never seems to work for me. I do have Windows Movie Maker; no doubt I could work it out if I tried, but it would take time to master. I wouldn't be allowed out to do too many airshows on consecutive weekends! I may go to the Shuttleworth later in the year.
We have airshows down here in melbourne,but on the other side of the city, where i don't live,unable to make it. Was there any mossies flying around? How about emeny aircraft on show? Was there near misses (crashes in mid-air)? In an airshow (can't remember what country) Two fighter jets smashed into each other and also the jets nearly crashed on to the public. One polit survived and the other lost his legs. Can you post some photograpghs on here,please
Adrian, if you would like some assistance then could you send me a copy and I could re-edit, and host it on my photobucket account. Then load up the links here.
