General Chat

One for the Aircraft enthusiasts.
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At approximately 13.40pm on Wednesday 5 June, more than 35 Douglas DC-3/C-47s will take to the skies from Imperial War Museum Duxford.

Escorted by a number of World War II fighters, they will set course for Caen-Carpiquet Airport in Normandy. The planned flight will pass Colchester, Southend-on-Sea, Maidstone and Eastbourne before heading out over The Channel.

http://tiny.cc/heqm7y

Flight Route http://tiny.cc/1fqm7y
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Unfortunately we have other plans for the day. :-0

Thanks for posting this DetEcTive

Son is going to be at Duxford from the 4th to 6th of June :-)

Lucky him! He's bound to have a wonderful time.

Yesterday I'd noticed several 'old & heavy' planes in the skies (N Kent). From posts on local social media boards, it would appear that they were Dakotas making their way to Duxford.

One of them, in Swissair markings, flew over here about a quarter of an hour ago heading roughly in the direction of Colchester.

EDIT: It seems to have taken off from Shoreham (Brighton City Airport).

I've got the Red Arrows flying over the house at the moment.The local Aircraft collection have an air display on.

The only thing in this area was a spitfire was supposed to make a pass over Gloucester Airport yesterday. Unfortunately we were not in the area at the time so don't know if it did.

was "following" a Gaggle of dc3's(on flight radar 24) which appeared to converge on Duxford....

What happened to the Airforce One post? Worrying about men in suits knocking on your door? ;-) :-D

Although I’ve used Flightradar24, there was a period when adverts blocked the screen & I wasn’t going to pay to get rid of them. Have they removed those now?
There used to be a slew of aircraft passing to the south of us late at night. They were all bound for the middle or Far East out of Heathrow.

AF 1? missed that completely...

Yes Det, I did start worrying. They wouldn't have found me in as I went to Duxford.

Six Daks took off in the morning and returned an hour later. Eleven took off at about one thirty flew past and landed.

I don't think AF1 appeared on FR24. They block out a lot of sensitive information.

I use an SBS box which decodes Mode S information from the aircraft. Not all aircraft provide position information, so although I could see AF1 was about and knew its flight level I didn't know where it was until it was down to a couple of thousand feet when it would be between Thaxted and Stansted.

FR24 gets its information from boxes such as the SDS box and triangulates to get a position for the aircraft.

It seems that there are only 24 Daks available for the flypast tomorrow. A bit disappointing but should still be worth seeing.

Driving back from Romford, Essex towards London around midday today, a Dakota and two spitfires (or spitfire and hurricane) flew from right to left in front of me and quite low.....now that was unexpected :-D

We’ve seen a more accurate flight path map, with timings. We’re tossing up whether to take MiL or if the sight & sounds would cause her distress. You never know what the reaction would be from someone who lived through WW2. Her home was close to the Thames & the German bombers targets.

DetecTive
It is strange that you make this observation. I recently had to stop watching the "Battle of Britain" film and previously one on the Bomb Disposal Units.
I also lived through that time and Dunkirk also we were bombed out by a V2.

I have watched films in the past so it must be a delayed reaction.I hope the Verterans cope today,it seems to be the sounds that are a trigger

Elizabeth, my mum used to hate the sound of firework rockets for the exact same reason.
Hope the TV coverage doesn’t cause you distress <3

On June 6th I was in a convoy of W11 army trucks ect that entered ST MERE EGLISE the first town to be liberated in 1944.. That was on June 6th 2013, a day i'll never forget, a friend owned a DODGE W11 truck that I was on.

That sounds a fantastic experience, Malcolm.

As for our experience today. We decided the cloud cover would be too dense to guarantee a sighting even before we considered MiL’s reaction.
Parked up at MiLs, which wasn’t on the published route. OH went back to the car to retrieve an item &, while he was there, 5 DAKS flew overhead. I was already inside & didn’t have time to dash out again. Grr.

It seems it was delayed for over two hours. I didn't get to see it but did manage a quick look on FR24 where there was a line of aircraft progressing along the route.

Hopefully the Queen's birthday flypast will be on time on Saturday.