This year I took the opportunity of attending the preview day and I, together with about 50 others spent an enjoyable 4 hours or so on site. However, the weather was not kind and about an hour into the visit, having been informed what aircraft to expect to see arriving the mist and drizzle descended, visibility dropped off and cloud base fell.

This led to there being just one arrival G-UVNR a strikemaster. The others were prevented from coming due to the Wx conditions. I talked with one of the Catalina crew the following day and apparently they had a rather hairy arrival late in the afternoon of the preview day, a blind, radar approach apparently.

Our visit was split into three phases and we were taken around the site by coach. Our first port of call was the Dummy Deck of the School of Aircraft Handling where we had a hands on look at the now decommissioned aircraft currently in use fulfilling an important role although now firmly planted on the ground for the rest of their existence.

We learned that there were approaching 20 Sea Harriers either on site at Culdrose or at Predannack Airfield where I believe there are 7 or eight.

The second phase was to visit ‘B Site’ being the area a little away from the Dispersal area and that included the static aircraft park. A little disappointed in the content of the static park this year but I guess so many aircraft are in use elsewhere in the world we have too few of them available to take part as an item to view.

Then we visited the dispersal area. This should have had many more aircraft available for us to see, oce again, hands on so to speak but with the WX many had not arrived. Never mind a good chance to take a walk around set of photos of the Seafire if nothing else.

We noticed the Hawk aircraft parked there all seemed to have their cockpits sealed with wgat looked like green insulating tape. We now kmow why as the news of the grounding of the Hawks came out last week with all to undergo checks as a crack mhad been discovered in an RAF Hawk at Valley.

Did we enjoy it , yes bys smahe the WX was unkind, will I do it again next year? You Bet!

I discovered a weird phenomenon on the day as every time I used the extreme end of the xoom lens my shots were out of focus, never happened before. It was a fair way into the show proper on the following day whren I found the answer. Upon removing the porarising filter I always keep on the camera the focus was perfect at the extreme end of zoom………….strange indeed, never had this happen before.

Norman G4USB