Farnborough International Airshow 2006
The amount of rain being thrown down by the heavens becomes pretty clear in this next photo as a Eurofighter "Typhoon" lined up for its display. Once airborne however, it showed no sign of worrying about the water lashing down and performed a superb routine.
As did the Harrier, with it’s customary flight and then hover – "bowing" to the audience whilst suspended on a column of air. Awesome.
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Click here for some brief video footage of the Harrier hovering and performing a "bow" to the audience (approx 3.48MB).
And then, an RAF Chinook, with its massive thudding twin rotors gracefully dancing around the overcast sky, even flying on its side.
There were probably as many helicopters as fixed wing aircraft at Farnborough. What’s more, it’s time for some pictures with sunshine in them again as it’s looking rather gloomy on this page, so here are a couple of fine rotary winged specimens for you.
Here’s a Tornado next to something rather more sedate – it’s a de Havilland Canada Beaver AL.1, a multi role utility aircraft that saw service in 1947.
Back to the flying displays, some aircraft just performed fly-bys, such as this B1B swing-wing bomber and this Nimrod. We all waved. I like to think the pilots waved back.
With the rain easing slightly, I was able to get a little drier than I had been, and just in time to catch this F-18 roar down the runway.
Ah, an Apache enters the show. This is a Longbow variant, you can tell by the large radar bubble above the rotor blades. Interestingly, I talked with an Apache/Blackhawk pilot at the US Department of Defence stand within one of the exhibition halls, and he explained that the Blackhawk is faster than the Apache. I personally found this surprising.
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