Old Buckenham Airshow
Date: July 27th, 2024.
The Old Buckenham airshow is promoted as the largest tourist event in Norfolk. It takes place over two days and attracts approximately 10,000 people per day. Old Buckenham is a second world war airbase used by the United States, where they flew squadrons of B24 Liberators.
This is a very enjoyable show as it combines a very family feeling in the way it’s organised and yet attract a great variety of aircraft.
A week out the weather forecast look to be wet and grey however as the weekend approach the weather improved and the forecast was pretty good and the weather actually surpassed that on the day. There was some cloud around but also a lot of blue sky.
The most attractive aspect to me of the airshow is that the runway runs East to West and the crowd are on the south side looking north. So the Sun is behind us and we have good light.
The arrival time was planned for approximately 10:30, the journey from Stevenage taking 90 minutes. However, on getting close to the airfield there was considerable congestion and the last 2 miles took approximately 25 minutes. I don’t remember it like this in the previous two years, so I must’ve arrived much earlier. The crowd line was full as can be seen from the photographs but managed to weave in and out and find a space not too far back from the front.
The show starts at 12:30 with an unusual item. They had combined a number of radio controlled 1/8 scale aircraft together with the explosions from some firework enthusiasts which made for a very unusual and very enjoyable opening act to the issue.This was followed by the B-17, Sally B, up from Duxford, a series of spitfires aerobatic aircraft, various types trainers, a Messerschmitt 109 and a P41 Mustang. Then there were the three headline act for old Buckenham which were the Red Devil parachute display team, and RAF F35B and the RAF typhoon display aircraft.
I think the only disappointing aspect of the display was the commentary, where the commentator seemingly had a little knowledge of the display routines and suddenly the aircraft would do a particular manoeuvre, which in many other air shows are flagged and preannounced, and especially interesting for those cameras.
To avoid congestion on departure, as we had suffered on arrival, there was a break in proceedings late afternoon and that was the chosen departure time. This meant there was an Airobatic team and the US Thunderbolt that I didn’t see. However, I’ve seen those earlier this year already.
A very good show good value for money when compared to Duxford approximately the same price to the public as a Duxford flying Day which has less than half of what Old Buckenham provides. Will definitely be rushing to book again for next year.
