Culdrose Air Day Wednesday 29 July

[Tankertrashnav]

Just confidently told my wife and son that the 3 piston ac flying in formation over my house practising for Culdrose Air Day were Harvards. Now I see that a display team of Yak 52s are performing! Well, aircraft recognition was never my strongpoint - I could tell a Badger from a Bear and that was about it!

On a more serious note, I see the weather is clamping in again - just praying it will clear for tomorrow. I've lived here 32 years and have lost count of the number of Culdrose air displays that have been severely curtailed or scrubbed because of the good old Cornish weather. Short of moving the base to East Anglia I dont see an answer. Anyway keeping my fingers crossed for you all at Culdrose after all the hard work you've put in.:ok:

[airborne_artist]

It's a well known fact that the Yak was a straight copy of the Harvard, so an easy mistake to make, trashnav :}

[Triple Matched TQ]

The weather on the other hand, is nearly always the same - amber with red aspects. See you in the beer tent
:ok:

[Tankertrashnav]

EGDR 290740Z 2909/2918 21015G30KT 0800 RA FG SCT000 OVC002 TEMPO 2909/2912 2000 -RA BR FEW002 BKN004 BECMG 2911/2913 27015G28KT 5000 BR FEW004 BKN007 BECMG 2912/2914 9999 FEW010 SCT022 PROB40 TEMPO 2914/2918 6000 SHRA SCT008 BKN014CB


Culdrose TAF shown above - roughly translated- c**p, maybe less c**p later. At the moment 3 miles from Culdrose its raining hard and cloud 8/8 at about 500'. What a shame, but we've been here so many times before. Still the beer tent should do good trade TMTQ!

[airborne_artist]

EGDR 290850Z 21014G25KT 2500 RA BR FEW002 BKN003 15/14 Q1009 YLO2 TEMPO 0800 RA FG SCT000 OVC002 RED

The usual 25 kt clag at 200' base, then :sad:

Best get to the back bar of the Beehive before it gets too full, I suggest :E

[oldpinger]

Ahhh the Culdrose clamp, the joys of being 'car park' officer dealing with the ice cream lickers getting all upset that the only air display consisted of a couple of low overshoots off the PAR:ok:

Although I was impressed at seeing Concordes' undercarriage coming out the bottom of the cloud!

Good luck to all with the weather!

[Sierra Hotel]

The 2005 display was most wonderful though, and the weather superb.
Thankfully the only year that i've attempted so far!

[Matt Skrossa]

Culdrose Air Day 1984 (I think)..... Red/Red and the only aircraft airborne west of Exeter was a Nimrod inbound. Nimrod has to do a PAR and the display commentator starts talking to the crowd by Tannoy about the aircraft. Nimrod gets to decision height and beyond still not visual, so it commences an overshoot, meantime the commentator is heard to say 'If you look to your left... you'll hear the Nimrod overshooting'.

About four hours later a Buccaneer is seen for about 2 secs on a very low and very dodgy overshoot! As always the cocktail party afterwards was awesome!

[green granite]

A view of the current weather in that part of the world

National Maritime Museum Cornwall ~ Visiting (http://www.nmmc.co.uk/index.php?page=Visiting&webcam=towercam1)

[6Z3]

One year the organisers truly excelled themselves with a grand raffle for a new car. The poor students of 705 were tasked with running it, and to their great credit they had sold tickets worth well over half the cost even before the Airday - spending their weekends selling tickets alongside the car in Plymouth shopping centre for example.

Come Airday, with only a few £hundred required to break even, the clag was worse than red/red. <10 yds viz. No one saw the car, and practically no raffle tickets were sold on the day. The raffle made a loss for service charities and the Airday was abandoned. Those visitors that did turn up, took several hours trying to find their way off the base and go home.

It has been suggested in the past to have Airday at the very beginning of the season, even as early as Flora Day (8 May) which is invariably a lovely day. But the Helston Chamber of Commerce vetoed the suggestion, siting that the Airday weather hex would destroy Flora Day!

Separate but semi-related: We once went to a Culdrose 5 Nov fireworks dispay, and the only thing we saw was a brief glympse of the Captain's wife leading a line of Guys towards a faintly warm glow ahead of us followed shortly after by the sound of the fireworks for 30 mins before we all felt our way back to our cars!

Back to today's events - Culdrose Airday BBQ always used to be one of the high points of the FAA social calendar - is that still the case, anyone? If so, have a great night tonight fellas.

[airborne_artist]

Met Office radar shows the front cleared CU at about 1630 local - perfect timing!

[Tankertrashnav]

Just been up my field and watched the Sea Vixen display, followed by the Yaks (see above) 1730-45. Glad they retrieved something and hope enough people stayed behind to watch. Well done guys :ok:

[Mr-AEO]

Its a real shame that both Yeovilton and Culdrose airday's have have gash weather as of late seeing as they are the only 2 RNAS based shows and it's 100 years of RN Aviation. I bet CAS has his own weather machine and it's all in his grand scheme to persuade the RN to give up flying!:}

Bad luck to all involved, go drown your sorrows in the bar and make merry.:ok:

[CirrusF]

It's a well known fact that the Yak was a straight copy of the Harvard, so an easy mistake to make, trashnav


Is it really a well known fact?

Apart from a radial-piston engine, low wing and a semi-elliptical fin I can't see many similarities. The Yak 52 was designed in the mid seventies, when Soviet mathematical aerodynamical modelling was a long way ahead of nascent US digital techniques - whereas the Harvard was designed in the 1940s with fairly primitive US aerodynamic modelling. And that's without even mentioning that the Harvard had a MTOW about five times higher than the Yak52...

FWIW, the Yak 52 is a superb aircraft that (as long as you can handle the oil consumption!) massively out-handles anything designed in the West during the 70s, thanks to exeptionial investment in mathematical modelling in the USSR. The Yak 52 must be one of the few piston aircraft ever designed that has the stability to be easily handed in IMC but still have the handling to be a world class aerobatic aircraft. It is definitely not a copy of the T-6!

[dilldog01]

is it just something about that part of the world in summer?...remember being at a St Mawgan airshow in the mid 80's when the pleasure fying Dak took off to give it'spunters on board their 15 minute jolly round the vicinity and then had to divert to Exeter because it could'nt get back into Mawgan

[airborne_artist]

Is it really a well known fact?

Have you heard of the expression "tongue-in-cheek"? It was humour - to save trashnav's blushes.

[Tankertrashnav]

No need to save my blushes AA, but thanks anyway - told you I was rubbish at a/c recognition. As far as I'm concerned it still looks like a Harvard! As for semi-elliptical fins, blimey, what are they? Thought I was doing well clocking the Sea Vixen today, but then apart from the original DH110 it doesnt look like much else - although I expect Cirrus F can name half a dozen lookalikes ;)