Rougham 2010 Report
by Tony Hooper
This event turned out to be as good as we expected (on the
Saturday anyway!)
An excellent collection of models which
were flown all day in absolutely perfect weather conditions – a light
breeze and sunshine!
In fact the weather was so suitable that we had the biggest display yet by
the Dawn Patrol and they performed extremely well re-enacting some famous
dog fights of WW1.
One very interesting fact was the plethora of 2.4Ghz was so apparent that
Phil Atherton in the transmitter tent had very little to do all day as there
were only 10 “steam age” 35Mhz
aircraft booked in. This has a downside of course which resulted in some of
the slots being very, very, busy and requiring a great deal of concentration
for all the pilots concerned.
The biggest example of this was the Bomber slot, originally comprised of 2
B17’s flown by Tony Hooper and Dave Johnson and Mike Eccles with his
Handley Page Harrow. After a short
while they were joined by a large number of fighters flown by the TJD team
and several other individuals which proved very spectacular for crowd but
very hard work for the pilots and the
John Cross the Flightline Controller.
There were some very good individual displays, notably Ali Machinchy with
his “prop hanging” or rather “jet hanging” jet, Mark
Hinton with his very impressive “swing wing” F14 Tomcat,
and Steve Carr with his 60% (yes that is correct!) Extra powered by a 546cc
engine driving a 41” prop!
There was also a most impressive display by Dave Johnson with his Airbus –
an aircraft that needs fairly good conditions to be able to handle in a stable
way and his performance to
the music of “We are going to Barbados” which has the introduction
of the talk between the aircraft and Air Traffic Control before take off helped
to bring an air of realism to the display.
All this was complimented by an excellent commentary from Colin Hammond throughout
the day.
A pity about Sunday which was a complete
“wash out” but everyone had so much flying the day before that
it made the journey worthwhile. There was a very good trade attendance and
the big crowd on Saturday must have compensated a little for what must have
been a rather poor day for them on Sunday. Oh well, that is the British weather
and we have to make the
best of the good days.
