Postcard from Yeovilton 2018 Air Day

[VH-WAL]

It has been sunny and hot in the UK for 3 weeks now, grass looks as parched as it is in Oz! Yeovilton is a bugger of a place for photography, the sun is in the wrong place and makes for challenging selection of camera settings.. also close to the ground shots suffered from heat haze / distortion!... got a few reasonable shots though, a selection posted here many more in the photostream.


















I have seen this manouvre done a dozen times, it still amazes me it is a gravity defying feat.




Obviously fast jet aircrew....























plus many more in the photostream.

[Graeme H]

Looks to have been a very good airshow, lot of very different aircraft

[Adam the Akrodude]

Wonderful photos as always. That photo of the bearded guy on the bike is awesome! It brought back a memory of a story my parents had when they went to visit a friend of the family over 3 decades ago at Yeovilton - who was at the time a SHAR pilot. He was a former RAN A-4G pilot who was out of a job when Hawke got rid of Melbourne and the Invincible purchase fell through so off he went to join the RN like a lot of his workmates did - sad time for the RAN. Anyhoo, so they arranged to meet him at the security gate and down he rode on a bike - quite amazing they thought that here was this young highly training naval fighter pilot often in command of a multi-million dollar machine riding to meet them on a old bicycle!

[VH-WAL]

hiya adam, his name wasn't Sinclair by any chance?

[Adam the Akrodude]

hiya adam, his name wasn't Sinclair by any chance?

Nope - went by the name "Paul". His parents were Lithuanian immigrants to Australia. Their boy did well for himself. At a family party, I remember a mate of mine and I running around the backyard taking it in turns wearing his bone dome when he was home on leave following graduating at 1 FTS. All he could talk about was the Macchis to come. At the time he was our "God".