High flying with the RAF Typhoon display team.

The Typhoon or ‘Eurofighter’ jet is the new state of the art warplane that has hit the headlines recently.

They are famous for being really unstable and are dependant on 4 computers just to keep them in the sky! These planes are some of the quickest and most manoeverable in the world and this makes them a great aircraft to show off at displays. Amongst the sponsors of the display team are Flexifoil, and when RAF Coningsby (the home of the Typhoon team) invited Flexifoil along for a demonstration, they didn’t need asking twice!

Unfortunately due to the many restrictions of a working airbase, only 2 team riders were allowed to attend. I was lucky enough to be asked to represent the buggy team and Dave Ursell the land boarders. Matt Ferris was there to keep an eye on proceedings and Kiteworld magazine came along to write a piece for their next issue.

After being very polite to the gentlemen with machine guns at the gates, we met up with our host for the day, Flight Lieutenant Andy Norris, the leader of the Typhoon display team. He gave us some information on the history of the plane before taking us onto the runway to see one in the flesh! The pilot, Flight Lieutenant Charlie Smith, then fired it up and gave us a quick demonstration of the planes capabilities before jetting off to an air show! 40 minutes and 5,000kg of fuel later, he was back and rearing to have a go with a kite.

We had some lunch and couldn’t help but notice the film they had playing in the mess room. Top Gun! We guessed that they were having a joke with us but they all kept very straight faces so maybe they need to watch it to get themselves in the mood for flying. I didn’t see the beach volleyball anywhere though!

After lunch it was time to get some of the pilots flying, only this time it was with a kite, not a 60 million quid jet! A couple of the pilots are kite surfers so knew what they were doing but the rest were new to it. Me and Dave did a quick demo on the runway but the wind was super-gusty which made things a bit difficult with the Blades. We ended up putting a couple of Blurrs up and these were a lot more fun and controllable. The Typhoon guys were really enjoying trying the kites out and got the hang of it very quickly. After an hour or so flying we had a quick photoshoot with the plane and it was time to pack up.

Before we left though, Andy took us to a hangar with 6 Eurofighters parked up. That’s 360 million pounds worth of hardware, not including weaponry! We were treated to a full guided tour of the plane, including the chance to sit in the pilots seat. For that moment, 5 grown men became kids again as we took it in turns to be a fighter pilot!

For pictures please visit http://www.flexifoil.com/company/newsitem.php?article_id=102307