The Vulcan bomber - free flypasts

[tony sayer]

Graceful .. ain't she;))...

[John Rumm]

The flight path on the map had it directly above my place. However we did attempt to get closer to the airport to have a closer look. Traffic was not promising, so in the end decided to take a gamble, and come back towards home and park up at the end of my road (where its open fields so we would have a reasonable chance of seeing something).

Turned out to be a good call - it was already circling and visible from the car on the way. Once stopped, we waited about 2 mins while it did its final circuit of the airport, and finally it started its return leg of the journey. It then flew almost directly above us ;-)

I got some very poor video - lighting was very dull and overcast. However, here is a still from it:

[John Rumm]

I setup a 150Mb virgin connection for a customer on Friday... Found the

2830 router could not actually handle the full data rate incoming ;-)

Straight out of the cable modem:

(although I realised later that I still had QoS turned on - so with that off, it may be able to handle some more throughput)

[Andy Burns]

The only video camera I have is a phone, so I left that in my pocket

Cloudy at Bruntingthorpe too, they wheeled the "naughty" Victor out to greet her

There were few hundred people there, first sighting

Flypast, I had my ancient 70-210 lens on and had to zoom-out to about

100 at closest, presumably the chap near me with his 600mm got good pictures of the pilot's nostrils.

Not much time for adjusting exposure, I just stuck it on 1/500th and left it there ... turning round

Straightening out

And past again, before turning towards Coventry

The mobile in my pocket was, of course, capturing audio ...

[Davey]

Over Eye, in East Anglia, it was supposed to fly directly over the town, a little way from the old airfield, the best viewing place. But a small storm cell diverted the 'plane so that it flew directly overhead! Great. I had a Canon Sureshot, I will see later what the video looks like. Not expecting much, but you never know.

[F]

Thank you! It really is a thing of great beauty (even the resident artist, who doesn't do technology, agrees) and it has a sound to match.

[Dave Liquorice]

If I known a lot earlier I might have tried to persuade them to do a small divert over Alston, coming from the north before Carlisle Airport. It was Gala Day, 1430 ish would have been a good time and they have had Spitfires and Huricanes doing flypasts on several occasions.

[Robin]

I'm all for recognising more the regions but why isn't it scheduled to fly over London - eg along the Thames with a detour over Green Park to dip wings to the memorial?

[A.Lee]

We were going to go there, and have a wander round the museum,but got stopped by the gridlock 200 metres away, so we parked up in the village, walked up to the football field and got a great view.

Luckily we were in spot where we could turn round easily - the traffic had got worse when it had gone, with cars stopped back to the village.

[Lobster]

On 28 Jun 2015, Andy Burns grunted:

The WHAT!?

[Lobster]

On 26 Jun 2015, "ARW" grunted:

Question.

Why does the underside of plane have a stripey camouflage paint job, like the upper surface?

From my dim and distant days of painting Airfix models, I remember the upper surfaces of planes being khaki or whatever, but the undersides were always grey or pale blue, to merge in to the sky when being looked at from below.

Is this just a peace-time crowd-pleasing thing, to make it easier for the fans on the ground to see it, or were they always painted that way?

[Andy Burns]

The CAA were distinctly unimpressed by this

[Bob Martin]

I was an NBS* mechanic and fitter on V-bombers in the early 60s. Actually fell asleep in a Valiant radome once.

• : H2S + NBC

[ARW]

I don't know:-). All I do is watch it take off and land and on this occasion give others an opportunity to see it in flight and/or show off.

Maybe the answer (and it is DIY related) is in here

[Davey]

There is a Vulcan at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana, in a veritable outdorr museum. I believe that the underside of that one is basically pale blue, from memory of several years ago. As an aside, having gone past several American aircraft of the Cold War, each one seeming to have more and more 'stuff' sticking out of it, arriving at the Vulcan with a sign saying "Here is a different approach to the problem" was a wonderful exhibit of how to do it cleanly. Look for 32 deg 30' 53.07" N, 93 deg 41' 00.85" W for the Vulcan, and zoom out for the others.

[CB]

Vulcans have gone through various camouflage schemes, here is an extract from the wiki page on the Avro Vulcan

With the adoption of low-level attack profiles in the mid-1960s, B.1As and B.2s were given a glossy Sea Grey Medium and Dark Green disruptive pattern camouflage on the upper surfaces, white undersurfaces and "type D" roundels. (The last 13 Vulcan B.2s, XM645 onwards, were delivered thus from the factory[78]). In the mid-1970s: Vulcan B.2s received a similar scheme with matte camouflage, Light Aircraft Grey undersides, and "low-visibility" roundels; B.2(MRR)s received a similar scheme in gloss; and the front half of the radomes were no longer painted black. Beginning in 1979, 10 Vulcans received a wrap-around camouflage of Dark Sea Grey and Dark Green[79][80] because, during Red Flag exercises in the USA, defending SAM forces had found that the grey-painted undersides of the Vulcan became much more visible against the ground at high angles of bank

[Roger Mills]

Interesting. I remember seeing one taking part in a flying display at RAF Gaydon (just before it closed - later to become the proving ground and engineering centre for BL Cars/Jaguar-LandRover) - and I'm petty sure that that had a plain grey or silver underside.

[Our now 40-year-old son was in his pram and screamed at the noise - so I had to put my fingers in his ears!]

[tony sayer]

You mean this one 'ere;)..

Or..

[Davey]

Yup. But it appears to have had a re-paint since I saw it, it was looking decidedly tatty then. I don't remember that sort of sandy underside back in 2001 or whenever it was.