RAF Lightnings

[Royzee617]

Final clip of the day and it's a good one. The Lightning is still one of the most powerful machines ever to take to the air in RAF service. We miss the stunning air displays that used to thrill millions each year. You can still enjoy the power of this beastie if you travel to South Africa but the rules in the UK forbade private ownership. Maybe just as well given how expensive it was to operate.

The last time I saw a Lightning taxi was at the CJ show at Cranfield. I have a vid clip of that somewhere. Gawd was it noisy when they ran the engines up. For several years in the early 90s Cranfield had its own Lightning air force. They were a sad sight at the edge of the airfield. Some of these are in South Africa or museums but I believe the 2 seater is still resident. We don't have airshows there any more because of the insurance but I live in hope.

 

[Nonskimmer]

Very nice. Has plan_D seen this yet? He'll probably shoot his load.

 

[plan_D]

Beautiful, beautiful machines. I've shown my dad is beloved 11 Sqn. Lightnings that were shown in that clip. Wonderful machines!

And yes I did shoot my load, NS.

 

[Nonskimmer]

I had a feeling you would.

 

[Royzee617]

Glad you liked it - shame about the music over the reheat take off. Typical TV - probably didn't have a soundtrack.
I think that this one and some of the others were from a Chnanel 4 doc on Britain's nuclear deterrent that was on earlier this year. It was when I was playing about with my new vid recorder.

Needless to say I have some more vids somewhere. I am sorting through my old tapes and likely will be able to post some more of the beastie some time. There are some commercial vids around too of course but the old BBC sees fit never to repeat their stuff - likely they have junked the footage.

One vid I have somewhere is of Mildenhall AF in about 1982 and it was a display by some chap called Thompson. That show was I think the very first I had a go with a camcorder, some ancient (now) betamax jobbie that my gadget mad friend brought along. Typically, it rained... argh! Got some good footage from the static though. Being cheeky we drove around filming - something that would be way off limits these days.

I think that red paint job Spitfire was there too. Plus a Vulcan tanker in the static. Oh the wonder of dear departed daze.

Finally I should say, if you werem't aware already, I am not the world's best at keeping records of stuff - labelling vids etc. But then the joy of rediscovery!

 

[evangilder]

Nice! I have been bad at labelling video as well, Roy. We recenly unpacked a whole box of unlabelled tapes that we are going to go through.

 

[Royzee617]

Nice to revisit old recordings.

So, when are we going to see them up here - the plane ones I mean?

I recently figured out a cheat to get them on the web. You record them on a DVD recorder like the ones you have under the TV. Then you put the DVD in the PC drive. 'Explore' the disk and copy the vob files to the hard drive. You can rename them to mpg. Then convert the to wmv via Stoik vid converter which is a brilliant free download.

So you record clips from your vids onto DVD-R as vobs then convert then post here!

 

[evangilder]

Well, I still have to go through them. They have a variety of subjects, so I am not even sure what is on alot of them. I am pretty sure that I have video of the Ramstein crash on one of those as well.