It has been almost a year since Rusty came flying with me. I had planned on going to Norwich – which is where I trained and Rusty knows well. Instead, seeing that Duxford is on the way, it made more sense to go there and visit the Imperial War Museum. Today was a glorious day to fly. The sky was clear blue with hardly a cloud. You could see for miles. Rusty kept the map on his lap for most of the short journey and he was able to locate our position very acurately in reference to what he was looking at on the ground, considering the area is very flat with very little land features.
I was recently watching a Discovery Wings show called Spitfire Ace – it was filmed at Duxford using Caroline Grace’s 2 seater Spitfire to train a pilot to fly the aeroplane. We flew in the C172 and take off from Cranfield was swift as the wind blew straight down the runway. We landed using the tarmac runway 24 at Duxford and the long taxi took us past the American hanger, past the F14 and the other stationary aeroplanes on display until we finally parked right under the control tower. My granddad took me to Duxford a few years to watch a brilliant end of season display show. It was a privilege to be flying in and be airside…next to the Dragon Rapide and the P51 Mustang not far away either
After a school dinner style lunch, we visited the battle of Britain hanger, then, moved onto the HUGE American hanger. Gleaming in the center is the B52 Bomber. The hanger has a great walkway which swoops up and around the entire building and takes you up to cockpit level of the aeroplanes. Rusty did comment that all these machines were all built to kill and I think he had that thought going round his mind for the rest of the afternoon.
Our landing fee only gave us 1 hour to roam Duxford without paying the entry fee. Straight after we took off, a Mooney pretty much followed us and then overtook us a few thousand feet above as we both tracked west towards Cranfield. The Mooney pilot was heading to Bristol overflying Cranfield on their route.
The song played during the slideshow is ‘Rio’ by Rusty’s band, the Doctors of Love. Rusty left me in London to meet his other bands tour bus who are off to Europe for some festival gigs.
