Mark, I have recently decided to build a KR-2S. Have seen your name often and assume you are very knowledgeable. I will be arriving by Greyhound (of all things) in Oshkosh on Sat around mid-day. Would like to meet the KR crowd and see all the planes. Could you suggest a camping area that might facilitate my purposes? Thanks, Ross Aldrich
> From: n5...@hiwaay.net > To: kr...@mylist.net > Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:24:16 -0500 > CC: corvaircr...@mylist.net > Subject: KR> Biggin Hill "Air Fair" > > NetHeads, > > Biggin Hill "Air Fair" was this weekend. It's an old RAF Spitfire base that I > was half expecting to be a quaint grass strip with a bunch of Spitfires on > hand, but it turned out to be a thriving corporate jet kind of place with > several runways instead. I guess I'm spoiled by Oshkosh and Sun N Fun, but > the planes were kept well away from visitors, and if you think OSH is too > "commercial", you have no idea how commercial it can get. I only saw a couple > of experimental airplanes there, and they were basically Bleirot replicas on > display for a cosmetic company. > > One reason I went was to buy a few metric nuts and bolts from what I figured > would be a few vendors of those kind of things, but no such luck. The only > real airplane parts I saw was one vendor selling instruments from old > military aircraft (what's a "power loss meter", anyway?). The majority of > vendors were selling hamburgers, chips, and ice cream, and a huge proportion > were inflatable kiddie attractions. It was a trifle disappointing. > > As for old warbirds, there were several, but the most notable were an ME-109, > three Spitfires, a P-51, and a Vulcan bomber. I couldn't stand to stay around > long enough to see the Vulcan, but I got to see it later, oddly enough. I was > back at the farmhouse when I heard this roar approaching, and looked out just > in time to see the Vulcan thundering overhead at maybe a thousand feet, > headed from Biggin Hill (an hour and a half's drive away) to it's home base. > What are the chances of me being directly under the flight path? > > There was also a worthwhile micro version of the Popham airfield antique car > show, with a few more cars I'd never heard of before. Below are some links to > the few flying photos that I took. > > http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/andover/090627238.jpg is an ME-109. > http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/andover/090627268.jpg is the Spitfire that > opened the show. Carolyn Grace did some aerobatics in it just to kick the > "flying display" off. > http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/andover/090627285.jpg > http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/andover/090627300.jpg > It's a beautiful airplane, and it was great to be able to stand there and see > a Spitfire fly doing ten or twelve flybys intertwined with aerobatics, at one > of the very fields where they flew from during WWII. That alone made it worth > the visit. You can't escape the history of this place. There are former RAF > fields just about everywhere. The book vendors were full of books detailing > accounts of various war stories as told by the guys who'd been there and done > that. I have a couple of books that Mac Wood gave me to read, and so far, > they are quite spellbinding. > > For more on Carolyn Grace and her Spitfire, see http://www.ml407.co.uk/pages/ > ... > > Mark Langford > N56ML "at" hiwaay.net > website at http://www.N56ML.com > > -------------------------------------------------------- > _______________________________________ > Search the KRnet Archives at http://www.maddyhome.com/krsrch/index.jsp > to UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to krnet-le...@mylist.net > please see other KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live? SkyDrive?: Get 25 GB of free online storage. http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_SD_25GB_062009
