5th Abingdon Fayre - 2nd May 2004

The 2004 airshow season is finally here. Time to blow the dust from your camera equipment and scanners! May is a relatively quiet month in 2004 allowing some smaller shows to grab the limelight from venues such as Duxford. Flightline UK visits one such event, the Abingdon Fayre for an early look at how 2004 will shape up.

Abingdon Fayre has been gaining quite a reputation over the last few years amongst aviation enthusiasts looking for something different from the normal show openers at Duxford and Old Warden. With Duxford holding it's first show back until the D-Day anniversary back until early June, many (including your scribe) faced the dilemma of just which show to visit. With Old Warden hosting many shows throughout the summer, and Abingdon promoting a strong varied line-up the pull of the little Oxfordshire show was too much to ignore. Espeacially as the entrance fee just a measily fiver!!!!

The first thing that a new visitor notices about this event it that it's not strictly an airshow. It's much more a local show with a fly-in and small air display as part of it's many attractions which include classic car parades, steam engines and even an american settlement village! Also on the ground were exhibitions by the local air cadets and the based Voluteer Gliding School with the Grob Vigilant T1 motor gliders as well as the Spitfire Prototype replica.

Back to all things avaition, the weather running up to the event hadn't been too promising. The weekend before was lovely, but throughout the week before this had steadily worsened. Even one the Saturday low cloud and persistant rain remained over southern England. Show day dawned brighter, though rather foggy. In some areas and including Abingdon this burnt off quickly to reveal a beatiful summers day. In others it persisted all day groundig many aircraft due to participant in Abingdon's fly-in. It also claimed the display by Denny Dobson, who was frustratingly stranded at his home base in Bedfordshire.  In the end, though the Fly-in was almost halved by the weather elsewhere, there were several highlights including Peter Teichmann's wonderful Beech Staggerwing, two Jet Provosts as well as several Austers and Chipmunks.

The early afternoon saw the flying display, which was somewhat longer than originally planned thanks to the generosity of Rob Davies and company flying back from Kemble in their North American P-51D Mustangs to their Woodchurch base. Following departure they formed up into close formation for a couple of flypasts before Rob gave his usual graceful display in Big Beautiful Doll.  The first is a series of military displays followed with a demonstration by the Royal Navy's Westland Lynx HMA8 showing off it's renowned agility to good effect. Martin Willing's T-28 Fennec marked a return to piston power with the next display growling it's way round in perhaps one of the mostly photogenic displays of the afternoon. In fact the Fennec started something of a training theme to the afternoon when it was followed by the first of the modern military trainers, the Shorts Tucano T1.  Even the most ardent airshow observer had to agree that the improvement over the 2003 display is excellent, and shows just how good a display aircraft the Tucano is. The first generation of Jet trainers was the next subject of Abingdon's show with Gower Jets stunning Vampire T11 putting on an excellent display. The blue skies certainly suited the silver training scheme worn by the Vampire.

The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight finally made it to Abingdon Fayre after two years of being grounded at their Coningsby base by high winds. Very aptly for the 2004, they sent their Supermarine Spitfire LFIX suitable adorned in it's D-Day invasion recognition stripes. A little bit of history followed the Spitfire, when 100 Squadron display pilot Flt Lt Dave Hartley arrived to perform his 2004 BAE Systems Hawk T1 solo display. After a fine display, again a display which better last years show, he promptly lined up to land on runway 18. This was the first landing by a current RAF fast jet at Abingdon since the RAF had moved out. As always with these things, the second landing was just a few minutes later when the spare 100 Squadron jet landed to take it's place alongside it's companion in the static park.

The honour of the final display of the afternoon went to Justyn Gorman in the Vans RV4. Justyn puts on a spirited display in this relatively small homebuilt sports aircraft which is celebrating it's 25th Anniversary this year. He also has perhaps the best internet address of any aerobatic operator: http://www.invert.me.uk !

Neil Porter and his team at Abingdon should be congratulated for producing a well organised event that was well varied as well as entertaining. Blessed by a gap in the bad weather this event has set an impressive standard for other organisers to achieve this season whilst providing the public with extremely good value for money. Next years event has already been penciled in for Sunday 1st May 2005.

 copyright Flightline UK 2004