Fairford RIAT 2007 Thunderbirds 5

--
Dave

not-me should be djw401 and there's no need for any wossname

Dave Whiley added these comments in the current discussion du jour
....

Nice pictures. Please excuse my ignorance, but what is "RIAT"? I
assume Fairford is the city or location for the airshow, but I'm
not up on the acronyms. Thanks.

--
HP, aka Jerry

Hi,

HEMI-Powered a écrit :
Nice pictures. Please excuse my ignorance, but what is "RIAT"? I
assume Fairford is the city or location for the airshow, but I'm
not up on the acronyms. Thanks.
RIAT stands for "Royal International Air Tattoo" :
http://www.rafcte.com/

Bye

--
D520
Roundels of the World : http://cocardes.monde.online.fr

"D. St-Sanvain" wrote in message
...

Hi,

HEMI-Powered a écrit :
Nice pictures. Please excuse my ignorance, but what is "RIAT"? I assume
Fairford is the city or location for the airshow, but I'm not up on the
acronyms. Thanks.

RIAT stands for "Royal International Air Tattoo" :
http://www.rafcte.com/

What he said.

To expand a little, the Royal International Air Tattoo is the big annual
airshow in the UK, held at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire (used by the USAF
to base B52s from time to time and also one of the designated emergency
landing strip for the Space Shuttle).

Fairford itself is a small town a couple of miles north of the airfield,
located he

http://www.multimap.com/maps/#t=l&map=51.70736,-1.77548|7|4&loc=GB:51.70736:-1.77548:14|fairford|Fairford,%20GL7%204

Customarily the show has been held over the third weekend in July but this
year it was held on 14/15 July. Just as well it was a week earlier, since
there's a lot of flooding in the area at the moment, and a couple of hundred
thousand extra visitors wouldn't help matters at all.


--
Dave

not-me should be djw401 and there's no need for any wossname

"Dave Whiley" wrote in message
...

Customarily the show has been held over the third weekend in July but this
year it was held on 14/15 July. Just as well it was a week earlier, since
there's a lot of flooding in the area at the moment, and a couple of
hundred thousand extra visitors wouldn't help matters at all.

.... and it looks as though the base itself has been affected, too:

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?...&article=47586


--
Dave

not-me should be djw401 and there's no need for any wossname

Nice set, thanks for posting

Dave Whiley added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...


"D. St-Sanvain" wrote in
message ...

Hi,

HEMI-Powered a écrit :
Nice pictures. Please excuse my ignorance, but what is
"RIAT"? I assume Fairford is the city or location for the
airshow, but I'm not up on the acronyms. Thanks.

RIAT stands for "Royal International Air Tattoo" :
http://www.rafcte.com/

What he said.

To expand a little, the Royal International Air Tattoo is the
big annual airshow in the UK, held at RAF Fairford in
Gloucestershire (used by the USAF to base B52s from time to
time and also one of the designated emergency landing strip
for the Space Shuttle).

Very interesting, thank you. I never knew that we parked B-52s in
the UK. I thought they were mainly based in the U.S., Turkey,
places like that. And, I have never heard that there is an
emergency Space Shuttle landing strip anywhere in the UK. I know
there are a number of them, several in the United States, but it
never occurred to me that in a real emergency they might not even
be able to hit something as large as the United States land mass
and would have to set down in another continent.

Fairford itself is a small town a couple of miles north of the
airfield, located he

http://www.multimap.com/maps/#t=l&map=51.70736,-1.77548|7|4&loc
=GB:51.70736:-1.77548:14|fairford|Fairford,%20GL7%204

Customarily the show has been held over the third weekend in
July but this year it was held on 14/15 July. Just as well it
was a week earlier, since there's a lot of flooding in the
area at the moment, and a couple of hundred thousand extra
visitors wouldn't help matters at all.

Thanks for the info!

--
HP, aka Jerry

"HEMI-Powered" wrote in message
...
Dave Whiley added these comments in the current discussion du

Very interesting, thank you. I never knew that we parked B-52s in
the UK. I thought they were mainly based in the U.S., Turkey,
places like that. And, I have never heard that there is an
emergency Space Shuttle landing strip anywhere in the UK. I know
there are a number of them, several in the United States, but it
never occurred to me that in a real emergency they might not even
be able to hit something as large as the United States land mass
and would have to set down in another continent.


That was something I only found out myself a few weeks ago. My guess would
be that it's designated as a landing point for problems during launch that
prevent the Shuttle from reaching orbit, so the only way is down and you
don't get much choice as to the where. When you compare the Fairford runway
at (AFAIR) 10,000' with, say, Edwards AFB (25,000'?), you'd have to be
desperate to try to get in there.

(Answering another post)

The Thunderbirds were on a European tour in late June / early July, starting
in Ireland then going East to Turkey and the Balkans before coming back West
to the UK.

I think someone should have a word with the Blue Angels now. They can't
possibly let the Air Force steal a march on them like that :-)


--
Dave

not-me should be djw401 and there's no need for any wossname
HP, aka Jerry

D. St-Sanvain added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...

Hi,

HEMI-Powered a écrit :
Nice pictures. Please excuse my ignorance, but what is
"RIAT"? I assume Fairford is the city or location for the
airshow, but I'm not up on the acronyms. Thanks.
RIAT stands for "Royal International Air Tattoo" :
http://www.rafcte.com/

Wow! I'd have never guessed that one! Thanks. So, then I assume
that the Thunderbirds had come to Canada or the UK for this airshow
which would explain the Royal Air Force helicopters.

--
HP, aka Jerry