Kevin and I headed to Clacton-on-Sea today, hoping to repeat our successful visit to the town's airshow last August. The sun was shining, the sky was blue and the seafront was buzzing with excited visitors. We found a good spot just above the beach, set up our chairs and ate our lunch while we waited for the action to start. First up was the Tiger Parachute Display Team, who were dropped high above the sea. They carefully navigated their parachutes towards a smoke signal placed on the beach and came in to land on the shoreline. Once they'd finished an RAF Typhoon came roaring into view and put on a spectacular display..... which was all but invisible thanks to a thin but intrusive layer of low cloud! The cloud wasn't really visible from the ground but it rapidly became obvious that aircraft photos were going to be impossible. A couple of the other promised aeroplanes did a perfunctory flypast before flying off into the distance, presumably because the visibility just wasn't good enough to allow a safe display. After an hour and a half of watching the comings and goings on the beach and soaking up our dose of vitamin D from the sunshine we decided to cut our losses and head home without a single photo of the promised aircraft!
25 August 2016
What a shame. You still got some great shots though.
Thanks Jon - hopefully we'll be luckier with the weather at Duxford in a couple of weeks!