Red Arrows – A bit same?

Saw the Red Arrows today. Still makes my spine tingle watching them and wish I could get up there and have a ride and as for the part where 2 repeatedly corkscrew over the remaining 6 as all of them are doing a big horizontal loop – It makes my brain hurt to think about all the variables that make that work and how the Pilots don’t end up piling into each other….luckily we get to see them every year but the show doesn’t really change that much and after watching the pilot of the Jett Pitts chuck that around the sky in lots of physics defying ways, I got to thinking what would the Red Arrows show look like if they were using different aircraft, Typhoons for example? Would the display be more extreme? Would they be able to be as precise and the hawks?

They do sometimes tailor the show to the location – Fowey in Cornwall is amazing, two parallel valleys where they split into two groups, fly out of sight of each other below the tops of the hills, then meet exactly where the valleys meet at the same time.

Typhoons for example? Would the display be more extreme?

Possibly less extreme. More power but also bigger, heavier aircraft. See the the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds (funnily enough only the US can find full sized jets being used). Still very cool, but a different sort of display to that which the Red Arrows do.

I got to thinking what would the Red Arrows show look like if they were using different aircraft, Typhoons for example?

Not sure the RAF has 9 spare Typhoons knocking around the place! 😉

They use Hawks cos they’re cheap.
Typhoons cost a fortune to fly and maintain.

Would they be able to be as precise and the hawks?

The Blue Angels (US Navy air display team) use F18’s which are far more powerful and their signature manoeuvres consist of incredibly tight formation flying, far closer than the Red Arrows. They get up to about 700mph in their displays, just under Mach 1. Not sure what the UK noise regulations would have to say about that…

I watched them practicing yesterday myself. I have to say that bay in Jersey must be one of the best venues to see them perform. I think because it is over water (for the most part) they fly at a lower level.

I saw a single typhoon put on a display over Silverstone once and it certainly had low speed / high power moves that would see the hawks fall out of the sky if they attempted them. I got a little curious and thanks to a Wikipedia page listing air display teams it seems the vast majority do not use fast jets. Two that stood out were the Blue Angels and the Russian Knights and Russian Falcons.

I watched a few videos of these teams, and the Blue Angels didn’t make a show of low speed agility, their routine would look almost identical if done in a hawk. The Russian teams perform similar close formation flying and they do also include the sort of low-speed agility demonstrated by the Typhoon; but notably they don’t do the latter in formation – at that point you are watching just a single plane.

My conclusion is that the fancier moves possible in modern fast jets are too difficult/risky to do in close formation. The precision of the display is what you need to come to appreciate, over and above the spectacle itself. Think of it like watching figure skating – it’s rare to see an astonishing new manoeuvre, but you can tell when a trick is executed well compared to when it is not.

Reference:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_air_display_teams

See the the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds (funnily enough only the US can find full sized jets being used). Still very cool, but a different sort of display to that which the Red Arrows do.

We have the Butlins equivalent.

x 9. Nuff said

I got to thinking what would the Red Arrows show look like if they were using different aircraft, Typhoons for example? Would the display be more extreme? Would they be able to be as precise and the hawks?

As above, no, because what are actually combat jets just don’t have the agility at the sort of sub-sonic speeds that displays take place at. That’s why trainer aircraft are used. Before the Hawks the Red Arrows used Folland Gnats, there was another display team called, IIRC the Black Knights, which flew Hawker Hunters, and I can remember seeing them flying, but the Hunter was a much-loved aircraft by pilots because of its agility and ease to fly, and it was a sub-sonic jet as well. Which is why there are Hunters in private hands, the owner of Cotswold Airport has a black one, the bike club my brother belongs to has its clubhouse alongside the runway, and when he got married the ‘reception’ was there – as the procession of bikes drove alongside the runway the Hunter came in low and fast and did a barrel roll for them!

It looks like the Hawk T1 will be replaced by a jet trainer from a new British company, Aeralis. It’s a modular jet that can be purposed for multiple rôles – trainer, light attack, aerobatic or a drone refueller. TBH, most trainers fulfill most of those requirements anyway…

Btw, I saw the Red Arrows fly past heading south yesterday, at 11.48am, while I was at my archery club. Too fast to get my phone out for a photo, and I’d forgotten they were supposed to be flying past.

…more recently…

drone refueller

live a couple of miles away and work right next to them, so we’re often out watching them practice over our heads, we consider ourselves very lucky, theyre awesome.

they had a family day the other week and i have a fair few pics of them plus the saudi hawks i think it was.  tried to upload them on here for you but it wouldnt let me.

yet we still get neighbours complaining theyre too loud when theyre out practicing.  why move near an airfield then? 😀

Basically it’s a dance show – would you complain that your local dance troupe with a new cohort every few years is a bit the same every year or that another troupe with different dancers/genre of music does bolder stuff?

I think there are much more sensible questions about their existence than the choreography.  I’m not convinced they are a waste of money, environmentally dodgy, and an unnecessary risk to the crews so that Union Jack wavers on the ground can ooh and ahh but I’m definitely not convinced those things aren’t true also.

They often use our local airport as a stop over during the display season. We go to watch them take off and land from the sand dunes at the end of the runway, which in a way is more satisfying than the display as they’re super low. They usually take off in 3’s then red 10 comes last and does a low pass or a cheeky steep bank for the crowds on the dunes. They always land with some sort of flourish as well.

Can’t believe this vid is 10yrs old 😱
No sounds anymore for some reason, definitely used to have sound!

Take off

https://www.instagram.com/p/eFuZ9qQoLf/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Landing

https://www.instagram.com/p/rfpjtlQoPx/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Like fireworks, familiarity has bred meh for me. Whilst I will never stop marvelling at the skill, visually it is just too predictable to wow any more.Odd because sunsets still have a lure and I’ve hundreds of time more of those. Maybe there is something about human ‘tryhardness’ of visual performance that will never Trump nature (for me).

I’m sure it has developed since the days I watched them in gnats as a kid, but I couldn’t tell you how.

What percentage of the RAF’s aircraft are the Red Arrows? Compared to the display teams of the USAF?

Channel 4 are doing a program about the RAF on Mondays, last week was about a detachment of No 1 squadron to somewhere in eastern Europe. They had 2 Typoons! One went u/s so they had to plead to get another one fly out from the UK.

Not sure if we can justify the Reds anymore (and I love them).

Like fireworks, familiarity has bred meh for me.

That’s just called getting old! We were once happy with a small box of Standard Fireworks and some bonfire toffee.

I’ve always thought the Red Arrows were aimed at kids anyway, and used as a marketing tool to show how cool the RAF was.

I bloody loved them as a kid – I WAS going to be a fighter pilot! 🙂

They should have given them Harriers! Now that could have been interesting.

I was chatting to an ex-RAF fast-jet pilot recently (now an airline pilot). He’d gone up in the passenger seat of a red arrows Hawk for a practice.
He said it was terrifying how close they got to the other aircraft.
As they were closing one gap particularly fast he was thinking:
“right, I’d be going engines to idle now, why is he still on the gas?”
“Holy shit we’re going to crash into him, reach for ejector seat”
“thank god he’s finally eased off the gas” as they arrived perfectly parallel and a few feet away from the other plane.

there was another display team called, IIRC the Black Knights, which flew Hawker Hunters

Back in the 60’s loads of front line fighter squadrons had their own display team. 56sqn Firebirds, 92sqn Blue Diamonds, Black Arrows, 111sqn, Tigers 74sqn, there were others I think, there was even another at the Central Flying School flying Gnats (like the Red Arrows used to fly) called the Yellowjacks.

 I got to thinking what would the Red Arrows show look like if they were using different aircraft, Typhoons for example? Would the display be more extreme?

Back in the day both the Blue Angles and the Thunderbirds used F4 Phantoms which must have been fairly impressive and the Thunderbirds even used the F105 Thunderchief for a bit, which was a monster of a thing…

After a few years of going to air shows the novelty of the Red Arrows did start to wear a bit thin, but their displays were always exemplars of close formation and precision flying.

The display teams that ended up wowing me the most were generally in very light prop aircraft that were purpose-built for aerobatics. While everything was at much lower speeds some of the things those aircraft and their pilots could do really looked like they were defying the laws of physics.

<span style=”color: #000000; font-family: Roboto, ‘Helvetica Neue’, Arial, ‘Noto Sans’, sans-serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ‘Segoe UI’, ‘Apple Color Emoji’, ‘Segoe UI Emoji’, ‘Segoe UI Symbol’, ‘Noto Color Emoji’; background-color: #eeeeee;”>The display teams that ended up wowing me the most were generally in very light prop aircraft that were purpose-built for aerobatics. While everything was at much lower speeds some of the things those aircraft and their pilots could do really looked like they were defying the laws of physics.</span>

That.

Arrows are massively impressive, nontheless.

A good Typhoon shot in BBC Scotland weekly photo

👍😊

I’ve always thought the Red Arrows were aimed at kids anyway, and used as a marketing tool to show how cool the RAF was.

That was my impression too.  But now I am old and cynical I think it is more than a recruiting tool (after all flying itself if pretty cool even to today’s kids) but is now a nostalgia tool for those of us who remember them as kids (and our parents) to feel good about being British, and possibly a bit of military skill willy waving at potential enemies.

I bloody loved them as a kid – I WAS going to be a fighter pilot! 🙂

Me too – no old cynical me just sees them as a propaganda tool to get kids to sign their lives away as a tool of our dodgy govt.
Plus environmental concerns etc…

Why don’t they replace them with drones? Could do way more creative & impressive displays surely?

A good Typhoon shot in BBC Scotland weekly photo

👍😊

Aye, and if you carry on scrolling down that page there’s also one of the Red Arrows themselves.

A couple of years ago I cycled out to the Rhyl Airshow, partly just to get a good long ride in. Didn’t stay for the Red Arrows (who were due to close the show) as I had a train home to catch but that was the show where one of them hit a gull and they all aborted the display anyway so I didn’t miss much.

Anyway, just before the Typhoon display, this family sat on the prom in front of me, all holding fish and chips. Young kids there too and the girl (maybe aged 6 or so) was looking down at her chips, happily pouring ketchup all over them and concentrating entirely on this.

The Typhoon’s entry piece is to come in fast and low along the beachfront and then pull up hard right in front of the crowd – you honestly can’t hear it coming and then it’s already pulling up when the noise hits and it sounds like the sky is being ripped to pieces. The chips and ketchup went everywhere as the poor girl leapt up in terror. Many tears.

Good display though, they can really throw the aircraft around.

you honestly can’t hear it coming and then it’s already pulling up when the noise hits and it sounds like the sky is being ripped to pieces. The chips and ketchup went everywhere as the poor girl leapt up in terror. Many tears.

That describes several walks in mid-Wales when I was a kid and the RAF were still allowed to train at stupidly low levels there. I remember my grandmother diving for cover near Llyn Brianne reservoir one day as a jet burst over the hill above us and my schooldays were punctuated by the noise of jets flying up the Swansea valley, albeit at slightly higher altitude. Kids these days don’t know what they missed, being able to wave to working fighter pilots. 😀

Fowey in Cornwall is amazing

Absolutely. I vividly remember seeing them in Fowey as a small child – stood in the water paddling as I saw them fly down. Fast forward 20+ years and I met my now wife. We got chatting about childhood holidays, which turned to Cornwall, which turned to Fowey, which turned her having exactly the same memory from her childhood. Spooky.

@richardkennerley

If you click on the little box in the bottom right of the video, the sound comes back.

https://www.instagram.com/p/eFuZ9qQoLf/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D

#redarrows coming in to land at #blackpool #airport #plane #geek | Instagram

I was quite surprised at how loud the first one was!

@Richmars,

Don’t believe everything you see on the tv, there were 6 aircraft out there, it was a case of sexing it up for the audience.

http://They should have given them Harriers! Now that could have been interesting

fast jet dressage?

I saw the Korean Black Eagles last year at Fairford and I thought the were genuinely excellent, very different from the Reds. The Italian display team go for smoke on at the runway threshold which always looks impressive. 

@jingle nah it specifically says “this video has no sound” for me for some reason. No matter, I’m glad you can hear it! I still got the original video in my gallery won’t with other times we’ve been to see them.

Try this one for size as well, I think this was quite loud! (Not the reds)

https://www.instagram.com/p/eFxbFOwoPe/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

you honestly can’t hear it coming and then it’s already pulling up when the noise hits and it sounds like the sky is being ripped to pieces. The chips and ketchup went everywhere as the poor girl leapt up in terror. Many tears.

I went to Farnborough with my dad once, many years ago, and one thing I always remember is a flypast by Royal Navy jets, in three groups. First were three Sea Vixens, followed by three Scimitars, then a bit of a gap and two Buccaneers came past. It was a damp day, and visibility wasn’t all that, and I hadn’t seen a third Buccaneer coming in fast and low behind the others. It was virtually silent, just a slight whistling, and the plane was shrouded in mist, a compression cloud, with just the nose, wings and tail sticking out.

As it passed, there was a hell of a noise, really made me jump, and I’m convinced that it was borderline transonic, it was so much louder than the other two.

Anyway, just following up the mention I made about the new jet being developed by Aeralis in Bristol, and a new article about it has just shown up, and it’s a far more sophisticated design than I’d realised, the plane is completely modular, with a central core, and swappable wings, engine pods, and cockpit pods, for a whole range of purposes, up to and including pilotless surveillance and refuelling. There are five different wing formats up to and including a design for transonic flight.

https://newatlas.com/aircraft/aeralis-modular-jet/

The Blue Angels (US Navy air display team) use F18’s which are far more powerful and their signature manoeuvres consist of incredibly tight formation flying, far closer than the Red Arrows.

Thunderbirds 5’s number is inverted as that’s how the aircraft spends most of its display time.

The Blues are silly good, saw them at a show in Chicago, bonkers fast.

I was on the RN Guard Ship at the Dartmouth regatta a few years ago which included a low-level fly past by a single Typhoon. I’m used to aircraft at close quarters but Jesus wept that was loud. Car alarms going off and masses of children crying loud.

I imagine a group of them together would open up some sort of portal to the nether realms.

I imagine a group of them together would open up some sort of portal to the nether realms.

“We have determined your hearing loss is not service related’.

I bet this would have been a noisy display:

“and it’s a far more sophisticated design”

Less a design, more of a ppt presentation with no substance.

Several years ago it was 2 years away and the rate of progress is decreasing.

If you want a good air show go to the Mach loop in Wales.

Its incredible how close you get to them, and the noise is something else

Fixed wing is a bit dull mind. Maverick can’t hover.