"My day job was suspended at both Waddo and Coningsby for the duration".
You were lucky then....mine wasn't! I have done some voluntary work at the last few Airshows since I retired and found that the Airshow was great to run with when I had got the time to devote to it and could pick the task that I wanted to do. As a volunteer, I could (within reason) choose my "shifts" and decide how much I wanted to put in - this was completely different to being given a task (that perhaps you did not want to do) and then have to fit it in around your daily tasks. The ability to leave at 1500 before the roads got busy was great (although getting up at 0530 was still a pain).
At the end of the day, the airshow was OK when you did not have to produce a fistful of risk assessments, write lots of letters/e-mails to the airshow office to justify what your plans are, and spend hours chasing around the suppliers to find out why they have not given you the items that you ordered months before but have not been sent to you. (The sergeant supplier decided that you could not have them, sir). And then have to do the fod plod when you have to meet a deadline with an external contractor during you day job.