Sloping Off - September 2004
Topgun - The Best Flightline I've Ever Seen
by Brian Wiseman
From time to time I have to go to Suffolk to visit some rather old relations. This year I managed to make the visit coincide with the Topgun Show at Rougham near Bury St Edmunds.
It was a wonderful show with the best flight line I have ever seen. There were far too many to describe, and unfortunately I did not have my camera with me. There was the regulation Spitfire of course. A Liberator, and Flying Fortress and a plane which was advertised as "the largest electric plane in the world". This was a Lancaster which took off did a circuit, lost an engine and landed. It was large but the B19 which I have also seen was I am sure was larger and the Americans have some experimental electric planes much larger than that.
For me there were two highlights. The first one was the C 17 mentioned in RCME. The wingspan is 6.3 metres and it weighs about 100 Kilo. It looked very realistic when Colin Straus wheeled it out to fly. The weather was difficult, rather windy and cloudy with storms about. As he taxied out it started to rain and I though he would not fly but because so many people were waiting and watching he took off. The runway was grass. At the end was a field of corn about two feet high. He ran it down the runway well past the usual take off point. I think the wet grass held on to the wheels. He just got off before the corn and then had to bank to the right so as not to overfly buildings but there was a barrier of trees to his right and I thought that he had just about cleared them but in fact he hit one of them and made a bad dent in one of the winglets. I expect that the weight carried the plane through.
He did several circuits with the plane lights on, in a gentle drizzle and then with wheels down brought it in for a good landing. Apparently he had hit the bollard at the end of the runway and damaged the undercarrage, so it had to be dismantled to take away and repair. Just after he landed the drizzle turned into a storm and the rain came down fast. The plane took 3000 hours to build has four Jetcat p120s to power it and it needs all of them. In the construction they used 10 kilos of Epoxy resin. It has been shown on Sky Television which is why it was built. It was certainly something to see despite the hairy take off.
The other highlight was a Me 262. It was either half or one third size and was powered by two Jet turbines. I talked to the pilot who said that the fuel for one flight weighed 12 kilos, so as the flight progressed the plane became much lighter and flew differently. There were no technical details of the plane given he had two good flights just like I imagine the real thing would look like. He said that it was easy to fly but you only had one go at landing. For some reason you could not go round again.
There were all manner of "smaller" planes including a half sized Fokker Triplane, several first world war planes and lots of Jet fighters going like the wind including the Eurofighter, which flew much better that the real thing when I last saw it! And of course aerobatics: how can they keep the planes in the air doing such a slow low rolling circle?
I can recommend a visit next year.
(and take your camera! Ed)
