Blackpool Air Show 2016

On Sunday we spent the day with David and Jeannie, going down to watch the Air Show on the Promenade and then going for a Chinese meal at Chu's Phoenix on Whitegate Drive, Blackpool - highly recommended!

We were a little selective in what we wanted to watch - the main attractions being the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (which ended up being cancelled due to strong winds) and The Red Arrows. So the show had already started when we left David and Jeannie's home to walk down to the Promenade. From near their house we kept seeing the Eurofighter Typhoon appear over the houses as we walked.

There were huge crowds as was to be expected, but we found a spot on the inland side of the tram track and the first plane we saw relatively up close was the BAC Strikemaster. They were an armed version of the Jet Provost.

The Calidus Autogyro came next. Highly manoeuvrable, it's probably fun to fly in but only if you are ok in flying in something that would drop like a stone if the engine cut out... I know commercial flights are not known for gliding long distances to safe landings without engines but at least they look as though they have a chance of gliding...!

I've never been in a helicopter either, but I'd quite like to experience that even if they seem to match the non-gliding qualities of the autogyro. This is a Gazelle helicopter. So called because they are "deer" to buy? There are very few helicopters that look pretty but this is definitely not one of them...

Team Raven aerobatic team. The aircraft are an RV-4 (the leading aircraft) with the rest being RV-8s. These are kit aircraft for home-builds although not all of these aircraft were built by their pilot-owners as some were bought second hand. Described as "Quick-Build" by the kit manufacturers, I suspect it takes probably more time and knowledge than your put-together wardrobe and there will be slightly more agonised angst if you find you have several screws and bits left over at the end...

The Twister aerobatic duo. The Silence Twister aircraft were originally designed as radio-controlled aerobatic aircraft but the design was modified and this aircraft is the result. With the beautiful elliptical wings reminiscent of the Spitfire they make for a stunning sight in close formation.

The Red Arrows made a superb entrance, bursting from behind the Tower and flying over the heads of the crowd who roared their approval. It was a much better sky this year than the last couple of years as there was no low cloud. The only bug-bear was that by the time of their appearance at 4:00pm, the sun had swung itself into the line of sight. You can't win. A morning display would be better for Blackpool as the sun would be over the land and behind or at worst to the side of the audience, but it would cause difficulties for anyone wishing to just come for the day to watch.

I took lots of photos, but will limit myself here to just a few!

Now that's what I call a close pass!

A brilliant display by the world's leading display team. At the end of the display, the Red Arrows make one final pass along the front to say goodbye and take applause.

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Messing About On The River

I've been scanning a few photos from old slides that I took in 1986

At that time I was working for Fleetwood Nautical College as its Registrar in the last year it existed as an independant college before its merger with Blackpool College at Christmas 1986.

They had (and still have) a working platform on the River Wyre at Fleetwood to train workers on oil and gas rigs in safety procedures for offshore workers.

On the platform they had some brilliant bits of kit, including this jet-powered fast rescue craft designated FOSC-5. FOSC stood for Fleetwood Offshore Survival Centre.

Offshore workers had to undergo a 5-day survival course in order to be certified to work on a rig and had to undertake a 3-day refresher every 3 years.

Not all of the equipment was as fast or glamourous as the fast rescue boat. There were enclosed lifeboats, including stranger shaped craft than this one. There was an almost circular one that pumped water from underneath and sprayed it down the sides of the craft - to cool down the sides of the thing whilst floating on a sea covered with burning oil.

Being almost circular, it bobbed about a bit! It was not a craft for those who were easily seasick!

Part of the course involved jumping off the platform into the River Wyre and clambering into an enclosed inflatable life raft - a feat that took nerves and a lot of strength to clamber into the life raft!

Another exercise involved getting into a mock-up of a helicopter cabin which was filled with smoke and then dropped underwater and inverted before the "crew" could escape.

Great fun! Happy days!

North Pier Carousel

The photos are from 1991, probably August. There was a Motive Power display going on along the Promenade, but a Google search failed to tell me the exact date!

The North Pier had just installed this magnificent two-storey carousel. It would later be partly obscured by some glass screens that were put around it to shield it from salt spray from the sea and the harsh winds that Blackpool is prone to.

I've seen similar carousels all over the place. In fact here's an example from St Tropez on the French Riviera!

The decking of the North Pier at the time was being taken up to lay a track for a tram that would take passengers from the entrance to the pier along to the theatre at the far end.

The tram would be mainly used at theatre time and at other times was destined to trundle up and down the pier with a handful of passengers.

And as if all this excitement wasn't enough, a helicopter was landing on the end of the pier to take passengers on a (very short) trip all the way down the Promenade almost as far as halfway to the Central Pier...

This did not do a lot to excite those who had been accustomed to fishing from the end of the pier...

In a blindingly obvious statement a sign reads: "helicopter rotor blades are dangerous".

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Moreton Corbet - Castle and Mystery

Ah! It's been a bit of an impulse day! I was in Shrewsbury for a meeting and having had that, I was driving merrily back towards the North West, wondering where I would be by the time my stomach signalled it was too long past lunch, when I saw a sign for a castle.

There's so many brown signs on the road these days (you can buy them I think - which explains why you see tourist signs these days pointing to "Lil's Burger Caravan"). Anyway, I wasn't going to stop for a lunchbreak and therefore thought a quick ten minutes look at a castle I'd never even heard of might be fun.

This is Moreton Corbet, which is almost two castles in one. An older castle has a few remains dating from the 1200s and this shell dates from the 16th century. It was originally built, not by a Norman, but by a Saxon who had found favour with the new rulers in our country. A rare castle then - although apparently the Saxon, Bartholomew Toret, fell out with King John and was thrown in jail in 1215. The castle passed into the hands of the Norman Corbet family when Toret's heiress married into the family a couple of dozen years later.

I started off at the 16th century block and then walked through to the remains of the older castle. Part of the keep tower still stands and some of the outer wall, though little remains of any rooms. The most complete part is the gatehouse which had been remodelled in the 1500s.

Walking out via the gatehouse I passed though a fence with two very unusual "gateposts". I was now in the driveway to a church, St Bartholomew's, which had a very fine old building nearby - the old rectory perhaps. I didn't go into the church as I still get twinges of guilt at sightseeing on a working day. How ridiculous that is considering I could have legitimately taken an hour for lunch and in any case had been away from home for two nights... Well, I spent perhaps a quarter of an hour altogether and had driven a massive 4 miles (counting both the journey from the main road and going back) in a diesel hire car that reckoned it was doing 56 miles per gallon.

It was whilst looking at the church that I got an inkling of where the "gateposts" had come from. I wonder where the other two were? I was also amazed at the number of helicopters that were buzzing about my ears. At least ten had flown over during my visit and some of them were very low. Looking up the castle on the Internet just now, I found I was just a short distance from an RAF helicopter training school. So not the castle to go to for peace and quiet then!

There is a ghost story here, of the Puritan who was a guest and who outstayed his welcome, being thrown out of the castle. He cursed the new block so that it would never be completed and it is said that his ghost haunts it still to make sure it won't ever be. It wasn't ever finished in fact and the Roundheads setting it on fire certainly helped the ghost put the kibosh on the Corbet family's building aspirations! The bright sunshine today though, certainly didn't have me thinking of ghosts and hauntings! It's good sometimes to go aside from your route on impulse!

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Arcade Racing Machines 2

I've already shown one variant of this arcade game of the 1950s.

Here the game is to see who can get their helicopter to rise first to the top of the cabinet by turning the handle below as fast as you can. In this case I seem to remember the helicopter started to sink down again if you didn't keep a momentum going! There are still one or two museums with arcade games of this era in existence. This example was photographed in 2004 at the excellent Wookey Hole caves and museum complex near Wells in Somerset.

Coin Slot Machines Index