Visiting the Shuttleworth Collection had long been on my list of upcoming fly-ins, ever since I was holding over with the Royal Navy Historic Flight as a young Sub-Lieutenant in 2015. I had spent a lot of time during this period around the airworthy Fairey Swordfish and Sea Fury and whilst based at RNAS Yeovilton witnessed many of the Sea Vixen test flights for the display season. I even had the opportunity to fly the Chipmunk and fly in formation with a Lynx Mk.8.. I digress, but the place that vintage aeroplanes have in my heart will always remain. So Shuttleworth seemed worth visiting for the next trip.
It promised to be a straightforward flight out of Gloucester, and to the East for an hour. Much more appealing than the comparative 2 and a half hours by road. I had G-GJCD for the day, a beautiful black and silver R22, with grey leather seats. A really lovely machine. I had enough fuel for the return journey, it would be a solo trip to run up those PIC hours in preparation for the commercial. I called Old Warden, on arrival at Heliflight and they ran through the joining procedures for all aircraft.
An Overhead join was standard for all aircraft.. a very fixed-wing approach to joining the circuit pattern.. with noticeable disdain in my voice I confirmed with the kind lady on the phone if that was the case for Helicopters too. To my horror it was. I printed the SkyDemon approach plate for Old Warden and in pen drew the overhead join route and I was fully prepared.
I set off out to HeliNorth and then an Easterly turn out and over Cheltenham Racecourse up and over the ridge and due East for an hour. There was a lot of see and avoid manoeuvres towards Upper Heyford, Weston on the Green and out towards Bicester. There was little gliding activity that I could see, and after the briefly intense period I was heading towards the Southern tip of Milton Keynes. The weather was absolutely spectacular with the visibility unrivalled I could see in all directions for as far as the eye could see.
As I approached Old Warden I referred to my expertly drawn Overhead Join procedure that I had done in the hangar. Listening to the Old Warden frequency, runway 21 was in use so I would cross the runway at 2000ft from South to North before descending deadside and across the midpoint and joining the downwind leg and into the usual traffic pattern for finals. I joined the Ovehead at the same time it seemed from the radio calls at least as a fixed wing aircraft, I saw him ahead of me in the overhead. This was incredibly helpful, as I now copied his radio calls, at the same points as he called and mimicked his manoeuvres into the pattern.
Although he landed ahead of me, he had a long taxi back to parking, by which point I had already landed and was running down. From first impressions it was an immaculately kept airfield. A beautiful Air Traffic Control tower of days gone by, unmanned today and 6 large hangars that were the home to the Shuttleworth Collection. With no landing fee, just the entrance fee to see the collection or gardens (or both!) I thought it was a good deal. In fact if you let them know you were a pilot, your meal is only £7.50 as well!
I was stunned with the collection. More so that it was all still airworthy. The 2020 season of airshows will have to be a must-visit. The aircraft from the collection display from May – October with the last show of the season rapidly approaching for October 6th. Today the birds were all at rest in their hangars, steeped in history, the walls awash with supplementary information about the timelines and lives of each aircraft and their stories. I thoroughly enjoyed the hangar with the old buses and cars, a nice juxtaposition amid the old warbirds. Some of the buses apparently over 100 years old!
I had a leisurely explore through the entire collection and what it had to offer, including horse drawn carts from the Shuttleworth family, old tractors, cars from the estate, the family limousine and an entire range of aeroplane engines. The engineering hangar I was particularly interested in, with the DeHavilland Comet pride of place at the front of the hangar, painted bright red, with a canary yellow DeHavilland Chipmunk from the Canadian Air Force on jacks and having engineering work completed just behind it. It was a real honour to see it all.
I had a lovely hot lunch, a coffee, and a chat with a gentleman who was a spitting image of the man who built Jurassic Park. I sat in the shade and we talked about how he always books a season ticket to see all of the airshows at the Airfield each year. Today though, he was here to visit a steam rally that had unfortunately been cancelled. He was an interesting character and I wished him well as I headed off to climb back into Charlie Delta and head home to Gloucester.
Hourbuilding Adventures 