The star attraction at this years RAF Waddington airshow was no doubt the debut performance of the Avro Vulcan. As an ex Vuican base and Waddington being billed as the RAF's premier airshow it was a fitting debut.
As late as Thursday 4th July, Waddington's press day, the Vulcan was still sitting at its base at Bruntingthorpe awaiting a Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) inspection and its final paperwork to issue its Permit to Fly certificate.
Throughout the day we were updated by members of the Vulcan To The Sky Trust on any progress that had been made, and it certainly came down to the wire. Very late in the day the Vulcan was finally given clearance to transit up to Waddington and upon its arrival it immediately went into a validation display to again satisfy the CAA before it public debut.
It was certainly a joy to see one of these beasts in the air again after so many years.
Other highlights included the Indian Air Force helicopter display team, the Sarang's. Sarang is the English equivalent of the Indian word 'sanskrit', meaning 'peaock'. Using domestic built Hindustan HAL Dhruv helicopters they are brightly painted to represent a peacock and put on an impressive show full of smoke.
Another display team making a long trek was the Halcones of the Chilean Air Force flying Extra