Shuttleworth Festival of Flight
Date: June 30th 2024.
The Shuttleworth flying display is the second of the flying events of the year, this was proceeded by the military flying day a month ago. Shuttleworth is the home of the historic aircraft collection and is situated between Biggleswade and Bedford. This is quite local for me.
Shuttleworth consists of the Historic house, the Parkland, the Swiss Garden, and the historic collection comprising early aircraft from the origins of flight through World War I, and a and a motor exhibition of the same period. For airshows such as this they get other aircraft flying in from local airfields, so they were aircraft from Duxford, there was a Swordfish up from Yeovilton down in the Southwest, and there were a couple of aircraft, a Mustang and Coursair here that flown over from France. In addition the RAF opened the show with the Typhoon display aircraft flown this year by a new pilot Flight Lieutenant Bill Turnbill known as Turbo. The Typhhon is now painted in Green/Grey Camo, with Normandy Black and White Stripes.
The great attraction of Shuttleworth for me is the intimacy of a small airfield. Here the flight line is a matter of tens of yards from the runway and the aircraft are flying so much closer to the flight line then major shows like Duxford. The pilots also seem to put on a better display as they’re flying lower and closer which from their performance it seems that they enjoy.
I was looking to get some good flying shots, may need due to the proximity of the display aircraft to the flight line. As always, one of the challenges was the direction of the light a bit like Duxford you shooting into the glare for much of the display although being close to the flight line and the aircraft flying closer to the crowds.
The display started at 12 noon, which is early, we couldn’t be sure if this was to allow people to leave at 4 o’clock and be home for the England round of 16 European cup football match at 5 pm. I attended with my friend Kevan Smith, and we had an hours walk around the airfield and had a cup of coffee in the cafeteria before returning to our chosen position near the flight line. Unfortunately I managed to leave my bag in the cafeteria and had to return across the airfield to retrieve it. As I started my return, the Typhoon arrived and I missed the first half of the typhoon display as I was still walking back to where my cameras were.
The display was very well choreographed, with very little gaps between the displays, it seemed well her rehearsed and very well organised. The commentary was clear and audible without being deafening and all of the pilots put on a great show enabling us to take many interesting photographs. As a result, I came home with approximately 1800 photographs, which as I write this I’ve reduced to 100 and selected approximately 24 for this blog post.
This reminded me that you don’t have to go far or go big, to attend a great airshow with great photographic opportunities. And a mental note to myself, to prioritise Shuttleworth flying events in the future over some of the larger shows like Duxford which can be on the same weekend.
