ABIW,
Not bitter - I actually enjoyed it, well the first 2 passes anyway and we had a much better view of them than the crowd. The Reviewing Officer was very unimpressed though, especially when the dias shifted under him.
I seem to remember a later rumour that the F4 had to go reheat on the third pass to avoid bouncing in the middle of the parade square - perhaps someone can set my mind to rest on this one as I would have been squarely in ground zero.
As an aside, for the following grad we got a Nimrod at 2000ft with idle power set for our flypast and we never even heard it from inside the rotunda. Strange that - 97's was a very hard act to follow.
D4R