Sunday - Day Three of Helidays 2010
 

Helidays is one of Weston-super-Mare's top tourist attractions and provides amusement for families on holiday here. On Beach Lawns in addition to the helicopter landing strip and control tower there is a funfair with stalls, shooting gallery, charity tents, raffles, food and ice-creams, slides and rides. There is a display of WWII military vehicles down each side.

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Sunday started with all the military machines in place, A109s from Belgium and RAF, German Sea King, US Pave Hawk, RAF Griffin and the grounded Chivenor Sea King ZH541. The Sea King crew had been picked up and taken back to Chivenor late Saturday and an engineer started work on the hydraulics early Sunday morning. A second Sea King ZH544 arrived mid morning bringing the crew to collect ZH541 and did a run along the sea front before landing next to its stablemate.

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Flying in were G-TRUE McDonnell Douglas MD-500, G-OJAZ Robinson R44 II c/n 11216, Police-01 Eurocopter EC135 which made a high speed run down the landing area and G-NDAA Great Western Air Ambulance came in at a fast pace. Enstrom 480 G-IGHH was advertising protective clothing for extreme sports. Robinson R44 Raven G-OTJS and Dorset Air Ambulance Eurocopter EC135T2+ G-DORS came in around midday while G-OJAZ and G-TRUE left about the same time. The stricken Chivenor Sea King ZH541 was repaired and ready to go and left at 1245, whilst ZH544 stayed to provide cover. Robinson R-22 Beta, G-ZAPY, arrived around lunch-time.

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In the afternoon the visiting civils left one by one, in a ten to twelve knot gusting west wind, whilst the military types had all coincidentally elected to leave around 1700hrs. The first to power up was the RAF Griffin and they left a little before 1700, flying straight out across the beach, making a left hand circuit and returning with a pass along the beach.

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The Pave Hawk lifted off just after five and flew straight out over the sands, circled to the right and made a fly-past right to left, with the crowds of onlookers waving farewell.http://mjr.org.uk/pprune-012.jpg

The two Belgian A109s took off in quick succession and made off to the south, turning to fly north just as the German Sea King took off.

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The three formed up for a fly past, then did a break, the Sea King flew off south and the two A109s made a final pass.

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The last aircraft to take off was the RAF AW109, and it lifted up a hundred feet, then put its nose vertically down and dived into a horizontal dash to seaward, followed by a high speed pass along the beach. A grand finale to a grand weekend.

Again apologies for any errors or omissions. Hopefully there will be lots of pics posted once folk have got home and got their images sorted.

Nice pix Mike WSM.I saw most of the mil Sunday evening parked in a corner of Weston airfield,presumably to depart for home today.
It really was a great weekend and thanks to the hard working team ,especially Sponsors Elfan Ap Rees and his daughter ,for organising it.What news for next year if they are pulling out ??

Thanks Heli1, appreciated.
Some really good pics are available at:
Friends of The Helicopter Museum
Fighter Control
UK Emergency Aviation
Air Britain
Weston Mercury

Better late than never!
 

A little time has passed since you took those pics Mike. Really good they are too. Nice to see you've shown some of the other attractions, it's not all about us chopper enthusiasts! "joe-public" get good value for money I reckon. My wife and I manned a charity stall this year and it was great fun chatting to all the visitors.
Super weekend! A big thankyou :D must go to Elfan, Claire and all of the volunteers that worked so hard to make it such a successful event.