A couple of weeks ago I was idly browsing on twitter early one Saturday afternoon - MrEH was out at rugby, and I had the afternoon to myself. Suddenly I spotted a tweet from our locally based aerobatic team saying that as the weather was clearing, they were getting ready to get their three Folland Gnats airborne - after my very own "Scramble! Scramble!" moment, I found myself in the car with camera and stepladder, heading in the direction of North Weald airfield.
Not being sure exactly how long they'd take to get ready and head away, I started off "landside" as it were - the car-park side of the runway fence - with the "non-live" side of the airfield being used for the Saturday market there were a fair number of folk there just having a look to see what was going on and I was able to let a couple of them know that something a bit special was going to be taking off in a while, and sure enough, before too long this happened...
That gives you some idea of the sort of blast you get behind three jets taking off! Takeoffs from that direction at North Weald are fab as jets are still nice and low as they come past you...
Once they'd headed off to go and do their display practise (they're currently getting ready for the 2014 display season) I hopped back into the car and drove around to the "live side" - there's a car park round there for the cafe MrEH and I like, and I'd been told you could park there and then walk back around the perimeter road to the Gnats hangar. The first thing you pass, pretty much, is this...
...yes, our local Air Ambulance. Note it's "G-HAAT" registration - Herts Air Ambulance Trust is the name of the charity that runs it - good eh? (The London one currently bears G-EHMS - standing for Emergency Helicopter Medical Service) Apologies to it for cutting it's tail and rotors off by the way - I couldn't get any further back than that! Thankfully all was quiet for them on this particular day and I was pleased not to see it lift at all while I was over there.
I wandered on in the direction of the Gnats - they'd arrived back by this time, and the first thing I came across was this sitting basking in the sunshine...
...G-TIMM (XS111), painted in a Red Arrows coloursheme to represent the plane flown by former, legendary Reds team boss Ray Hanna. I will admit I dug in my pocket to get at the 50mm lens for this one, she just looked SO good sitting under that rather fantastic sky! On then to take a look at the newest member of the team - meet G-MOUR...
...and I think you can see from that just how lovingly these grand old ladies are polished - this one (XR991) will have her 50th birthday later this year (the youngest of the team's three aircraft, in fact!), yet you'd never know it to look at her! She wears the colourscheme of the Yellowjacks, one of the forerunners to the Red Arrows, and will be performing her first display season with the team this year.
The engineers were busy turning the planes around for their next sortie - the fuel truck did the rounds of all three of them...
...and once that was done preparation for another takeoff began...
...crewing in G-TIMM...
...then time to get the engines going - a fantastic sound always, but from that range, frankly even more so - wow!
Time for canopies down and taxi out...
...and this is the third member of the team G-RORI (XR538) wearing the paint scheme of No. 4 Flight Training School based at RAF Valley. No. 4 FTS still exists, now flying the Hawk T2 instead, the Gnats having been retired as the RAF's jet trainer in 1969.
As the three jets taxied out, we wandered across the grass to get as close as we were allowed to the runway - still a fair way back but thankfully my 100-400mm lens has enough reach to allow for some close shots nonetheless...
You can really see the three colourschemes there too, and how well they work together - I'm thoroughly looking forward to seeing the display at an airshow this season!
Finally the three-ship came back and did a nice pass over the airfield with smoke on before their break to land.
It was absolutely superb to spend time around these three fabulous jets. It's truly fascinating watching the engineers getting the planes ready to go out, and there is truly nothing quite like those engines up close, and the smell of jet fuel. Hopefully I'll get back over to North Weald again at some stage when they're up - it's definitely an advantage of having a "local" (just a few miles away) airfield!
Robyn
Thanks to the Gnat Display Team for being OK with this - and I hope my efforts at staying out from underfoot were good enough! Thanks also to Richard for information about where was OK to walk on the live-side. :-)
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