In my archive are many hours of fun from Duxford - it is amazing what you see on a visit on any day of the week... let alone an airshow day. A few years ago we went during the school holidays. That day we saw them reshuffling some of the warbirds including the Hurricane, the P40 and the P47 from their hangar. Over the next week I will be putting up the movie clips I have made. So if you are a fan of these machines in their natural habitat then come back soon. I also have some footage of the P38 somewhere and the Bf109G being ground run so you are in for a treat if I can find them!

To kick things off here is a movie clip of the B25D Mitchell 'Grumpy' (see above) which is resident at Duxford. While we were there in 1999 several planes were prepared and launched for an airshow. This is one of the bonuses you might get if you visit later in the week... we were looking around the USAAF Hangar and the B25 took off... click here to view the file (1.3 Mb).

Nice selection of shots taken at the 1998 Classic Jets Show at Cranfield in the UK. See two civil-owned Provosts (one a T5A) get airborne and flypast intermingled with various Hunters coming into to land. I recall seeing this part of the show and being a mite concerned about a 'traffic conflict'!

The Meteor & Vampire, the RAF's first jet trainers. This pair commemorates the 'Vintage Pair' which used to entertain us in the 80s. The Vampire is a Mk55 and the Meteor is, however, the long nose radar equipped night fighter version. Both are privately owned - their display is elegant and sounds superb. This is a RAM file and should open up in your Realplayer.

There'll be more from my vault of old TV broadcasts of airshows from the days when they used to do such things... every year you would get at least one show from say Farnborough or Biggin. Now the BBC et al have seemingly turned its back on airshows which is a shame. Good job we have Discovery Wings but even that gets tedious at times with too many repeats.

Earlier I posted a two-clip sequence of the F27 Troopship display at Biggin. This was an awesome display - a twin-engined transport plane being hurled around the sky like a fighter with smoke pouring from the engines one of which used to be shut down during steep turns then reactivated... I have a longer video of the entire sequence at Mildenhall somewhere... The commentary leaves a lot to be desired unfortunately so maybe it isn't the BBC! You now have to go offsite to view this c/o JFKTower... here.