Cosford Air Show 2012

Cosford Air Show 2012

Hi All,

On Sunday 17th June we took 13 of our Cubs & Scouts to the Cosford air show in Shropshire.

We met at HQ early on Sunday morning and boarded a minibus, which we’d hired from our colleagues at the 7th.
The weather was overcast but no rain!

We then headed onto the motorway network before joining a surprisingly short queue into Cosford.
By around mid morning we reached our destination and were directed onto the main public car park, which was filling up very quickly.

First stop was the toilets and then to choose a spot where we could all meet up over the day. There were some very large model aircraft flying around at the time.

After we had chosen an easily recognisable meeting point, we split the group up and allowed the older Scouts some free time to explore the airfield.
Maria & I took charge of the younger Scouts and asked them what they would like to do. First stop, the fair!

At approximately 12pm we watched the RAF Falcons parachute display team come down out of the sky and then waited for a very noisy RAF Typhoon to roar through the clouds and do some very interesting manouevres. We also saw one of the Black Cat helicopters doing a demonstration, which we managed to get very close up and personal with last year!

We then did some further exploration of the airfield before we all met up for lunch at approx 1.30pm. During lunch we watched one of my favourites, the battle of Britain memorial flight. This year only the Lancaster bomber and Spitfire were in formation as unfortunately the Hurricane had started to leak oil! The sound of the Lancaster and particularly the Spitfire made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and I felt very proud and patriotic.

After this exciting bit of history we let both groups of Scouts have some free time to explore the other attractions that were on offer at the air show. Maria, Simon and I visited the very busy market at Simon's request and he bought several post cards and an unbreakable flying glider!

At 3pm we watched the brilliant Red Arrows display team, a Hurricane Mk1 and a massive VC10. At appprox 3.30pm, all the Scouts came back to watch an Army Air Corps Apache attack helicopter and then a pair of Tornando's carry out a mock bombing run, which culminated in several explosions, fire & smoke!

At around 4.30pm we gathered both groups back together and headed off to find an interesting location to Invest 2 Scouts. After being denied a spot by some Jaguar fighter jets (by order of the OC!) I asked one of the pilots of an RAF Merlin HC3 helicopter if we could perform our ceremony nearby. He very kindly let us do the Investiture underneath the tail at the back end of the helicopter. How's that for an intersting location and welcome to the Troop Nicola & Daniel!

At approx 5.15pm we got back into the minibus and headed home. The Scouts and Cubs had a great day out and the weather was much kinder to us compared to last year!

Please click on the above image to see some more pictures taken over the day.

We hope to organise similar events in the future.

All the best,

Maria & Adam