Sywell Airshow
Date: June 22nd 2024.
Sywell is a small airfield in Northamptonshire. Up until 10 years ago it regularly held airshows, being host to the Flying Legends Airshow for many years. 2014 was the last show there, so there was much anticipation regarding the return of the show.. Sywell was approximately a one hour 20 minute journey. I was driving and was accompanied by two friends, Keith Bringlow from the photography club, And my longtime friend Kevan Smith with who I attend many Air Shows each year.
It was forecast to be good weather, and this was the case mostly sunshine with some cloud cover and temperatures into the low 20s. An attraction of Sywell is the orientation of the airstrip and the position of the crowds flight line.The flight line runs approximately west to east, with us the public being on the south side of this looking north. This has the huge advantage that until late afternoon the Sun is behind us giving us good light on the aircraft, making for good photography.
I had hopes that with the favourable lighting I would be able to get some good shots, and there were a number of aircraft due to be flying which had not been on the usual UK circuit in the last couple of years. The key component of this were the Flying Bulls, these had arrived from Austria. These are owned by the Red Bull drinks company, and were immaculate..
Arriving mid morning, I had pre-purchased VIP parking, although this only saved about 150 m walk over the normal parking. Sywell is quite a small airfield so the distance from car to flightline is a lot less than Duxford. We chose to set up centrally in the second line of the public viewing area. We then proceeded to have a walk around the airfield. Sywell is quite an old Airfield and much of the architecture is art deco period. Most significantly it has an hotel which is a beautiful art deco design, and all of the hangers, had an art deco look to them as well. In the corner of the airfield was a very old-fashioned museum housed in a very long Nissin hut. We had a look around this which was quite interesting and then headed into the hotel, and had a coffee and a bacon bun, to get our strength up prior to the riggers of the flying display. In one of the hangers there was also a small collection of historic racing cars, a couple of Formula One cars were there, real or replica I could not tell. We returned to our position And the flying started at approximately 1:30 pm. A great display number of things that we hadn’t seen before, but the highlights was the husband and wife Wing Walking exhibition. You can see this in the photographs below, they were quite extraordinary.
I’ve taken some good photographs, the usual challenge being with prop aeroplanes to try and get the propeller blurred, while panning with a slow shutter speed and trying to get the subject sharp. I did get a couple of photographs which I was very happy with and those will feature in, my aviation section on the website. Overall, this was a great day, pricewise it was similar to Duxford, but it had the feel of a smaller airshow something more like the Norfolk show at Old Buckenham or a large version of the Shuttleworth show. It did not have the huge crowd capacity that you get it Duxford. It was therefore more relaxed and a very enjoyable afternoon.
