The Sunderland Air Show.

So we arrived off Roker beach at around midday and took up our preferred position about midway down the flight path.  There weren't that many boats out there, just a few milling about in and out of the yet to me marked exclusion zone.

A few aircraft seemed to be checking out the display area.  This trio turned up several times.
 

This Bronco had a good time too.

Then we had some helos making a big draught as they thundered overhead.

By late afternoon a few more boats had turned up and a carnival atmosphere encompassed the scene and proceedings were opened by this pair that really need no introduction I think.

 
 It has been many years since I last went to an air show.  As a nipper I was right keen on them but haven't things changed.  I remember Ramond Baxter narrating on the Red Arrows.  All they ever did was change from one tight formation to another with the odd bomb burst thrown in.  Not that changing from a Diamond 9 to Vulcan isn't a brilliant feat of aeronautical brilliance but when two singletons are flying contra rotating spirals round the main bunch with smoke...... well.

The Red Arrows are superb.
 



 The high performance stunt planes were just unbelievable with the tricks they could do.  Many would have ended in disaster in the stunters of my youth and indeed one did just a few days after this show.

 But the most fantastic show of all had to be the Typhoon Eurofighter.  I have never seen this fly and it is now getting a bit long in the tooth really but even so.  My last proper fighter show was the English Electric Lightning.  The Typhoon stood virtually at a standstill on its jets, OK not as nimble as the old Harrier Jump Jet but still.  The noise was so loud the air cracked just a few hundred feet about Tutak.  We're not talking sonic booms here, just BIG noise from that pair of EJ200s with vectoring thrust.  OK so I couldn't hear the next day and I fear my ears will always now be ringing but what an experience.

 

 

As dusk fell a buzzing noise was just heard above the noise of the crowds on the beach road.  A pair of stunt planes came into view, only because they were lit up all over with lights.

 

One was red and the other blue.  To show what they were up to they made fire as well as smoke and Roman Candles showered down from the aircraft.  When at last it was too dark for even these planes to keep us entertained and once they had radioed to say they were out of range, the mortars of the firework display opened up with monstrous barrage of sound and colour.
 

And there ended the first day.