The morning dawned misty, claggy and horrible, but the forecast was not too bad and by the time I got to the airfield and checked the plane out, there were large blue patches between the clouds and they were getting larger!
So took off for the short flight from Gloucester to Cosford, but by the time I was near Worcester, I was flying into the weather and the cloud went solid with me bumping my head on it at 2000’.
Tuned in to Cosford Approach and heard a passing PA28 say he was in IMC at 1400’ just north of Cosford and heading for Shoreham (not a good height to be in IMC I would have thought) – so the cloudbase was obviously worse the further north we went. None of this was a major issue because if push came to shove, I could go ‘on top’ and scoot back to Gloucester and either find a hole in the cloud or do an NDB / DME let down - but it would put paid to the airshow idea.
Anyway, pressed on. We went around Wolverhampton Pan-galactic Spaceport zone to the west and called Cosford for instructions. They were up and about and had just had their first GA arrival of the day, a Beagle, with us second in line. I was given a left base join for 24 with minimal crosswind component. Approaching Cosford and we were forced down to 1400’ by the lowering misty cloudbase, but saw the field easily and slipped in to land.
As I was rolling out to the end of the runway to park, had a strange RT conversation with the tower along the lines of:
TWR: G-LG can you see the helicopter on the NW of the airfield?
G-LG: Affirm (… what’s that got to do with the price of eggs?)
TWR: You are number two behind him
G-LG: Errr - I’m already on the runway and about to be marshalled (… shurly shome mishtake?)
TWR: G-LG disregard…..G-RX….. (… Oooops – wrong callsign!)
Marshalled to park beside the Beagle as the second GA aircraft to arrive, unloaded and paid the crazy fee of £55 odd which included an additional £20 charge (no – not the £7.5m crown indemnity which I already had and faxed them proof of – something else - they vaguely muttered about the EU and new rules!). Oh well.
The airshow was far larger than I expected with god knows how many cars. So we pitched up at the flightline, set up camp and watched the proceedings.
The weather changed as the weak cold front went through and the cloudbase lifted to probably 3 – 4,000’ with excellent visibility – but it did get cold – I mean people wrapping themselves in blankets cold!
I have to say, the highlights of the show for me were the Red Arrows (of course), the Extra 300, the Chinook and the new Typhoon – what an incredible turning circle!
There were about 10 GA aircraft that made it to the flyin, including one very distinctive black and orange Dakota owned by Polly Vacher! Was that you in the red chippie Vince?
Allowed back to our aircraft while the final aircraft was displaying and started the long taxi along the grass past some incredible aircraft to 24. I think I was about the third aircraft away.
Climbed to 3000’ and gave Wolverhampton another wide berth to the west, then set course for Gloucester. Spotted a lovely yellow Beech staggerwing (it too part in the display) south of Wolverhampton at the same height, in my 9 o’clock position on a converging course, probably 1k or so away. We had obviously both seen each other and he pulled gradually ahead then veered right to cross ahead and well in front of me – I would guess heading for Shobdon or Cardiff or whatever. Shame I couldn’t get the camera on it with enough zoom!
Headed back to Gloucester and landed on 27 after a standard overhead join. The good news is that the nosewheel shimmy seems to have been fixed at Enstone and the repaired nosewheel spat is fitted and looks good and the plane seems in really good shape all round.
PS – I must remember that airshows give me a splitting headache and take paracetamol to RIAT Fairford (and you own lunch to avoid ‘captive audience’ prices)!
PPS – Filling in my logbook afterwards, I note that it was on the outbound leg that I clocked up 250 hours TT!
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