Once again I’ve got to my final Airshow blog post without losing too much hair or going noticeably greyer (not possible, I hear people say).
From an organiser’s point of view, the flying display went extremely well. As you may have noticed, I had to substitute the T6 Texan for the Skyraider at very short notice due to serviceability issues, and the Bronco had problems starting so missed his first slot . . . but other than that, and a small re-programming issue later in the afternoon, the display ‘ran on rails’, as they say.
We were certainly lucky with the weather this year, and I do hope that nobody is suffering from a lack of sunscreen. It was certainly a tad tropical in the control cabin, surrounded by all that glass.
Highlights for me were the Lancaster, which looked and sounded magnificent as it flew down the display line belly on to the crowd, and the Bronco/T6 flypasts. The RAF Red Arrows were their usual impeccable selves and, with Red 10 providing the commentary, made up a fantastic first half of the display.
The Breitling Wingwalkers were as popular as ever, and having them on site early in the day to meet the audience and sign pictures and prints was a great bonus. Their display was the usual elegant and spectacular affair, providing us with our own private fog bank – their smoke took a while to clear and resulted in a worried query from on high asking if we were going to lose the rest of the display due to the fog!
The Typhoon provided a fitting finale, and the sight of the reheat glowing through the cloud as the aircraft spiralled up to 10,000ft will stay as a lasting memory of Airshow 2014. So, that’s it for another year, at least until we start planning again in September! The event just seems to go from strength to strength and it’s a pleasure to work with everyone. So it just remains for me to say thank you to you all for reading my scribbles over the past few months, and to remind you that we’ll be back next year for, hopefully, an at least equally-successful Scottish National Airshow 2015.
Take a look at some of the fantastic images on the air display and on the ground activity that were taken of Scotland’s National Airshow in our Flickr Group.