If you're referring to the occasion when 2 x Fulcrum flew to Farnborough, thunderbird7, then you're talking almost as much bolleaux as tourist - who clearly hasn't the faintest idea about air defence... If 'sticking wepaons on' an inappropriate air platform is the fishead way, then thank heavens they don't have anything other than helicopters to bugger about with these days.
The MiG 29 event occurred on 30 Aug 1988; the politicians had decided that the Fulcrums had to be escorted into Farnborough, so the plan was for a VC10K to carry the journos to film the event as the F3s joined with the MiGs. Due to the limited speed range of the VC10K, the max IAS permitted was relatively low and we also needed to maximise the time available for the journos to do their stuff...
We joined up with our F3s, then turned in to escort Anatoli and his wingman. All went fine, except that one F3 wouldn't get out of the bŁoody way and as a result it was quite difficult to position the VC10K in such a position that the BBC, ITN, UP, API, TASS and Flight could get their shots. It was also fairly obvious that the F3 leader had little experience of leading such a mixed formation down through the Ambers and over to Farnborough. We had to ease out as he led us all into cloud
(the Russians had earlier rejected the idea of the VC10K being in close formation), so then had to catch them again once we broke out below...
But the press got their photos and we made the lead story on the 6 o'clock news, so it was a DCO as far as we were concerned. And having Janice Lowe from
Flight squirming against my shoulder to get her shots was...rather nice
- and she sorted us out with some Filofaxes (this was the 1980s...) and hosting in the
Flight chalet when we later went to the show!