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For the fifth year in a row, your car alarm is going to go off.

  • Matt Wilkins
  • Mar 23
  • 1 min read

Updated: Apr 8

This is not a debut; it's somehow become a fabulous tradition and long may it continue. This is the fifth, yes, fifth time in a row when the 1,150mph, 20,000lb of thrust space age Typhoon makes an appearance, arriving at a stately 600+ mph and then pulling up more or less vertically at a climb rate of just mind bogglingly quick.


If you've been coming for five years, then you know already that you'll want ear protection. You'll also wonder what set your car alarm off when you get back - that would be the shockwave as 29 tonnes of pure power, computers and RAF brilliance, rip the air apart courtesy of Squadron Leader Nathan Shawyer.


Nathan's commands are relayed via the controls to a set of computers which then work out how to translate what he's after to the flight controls and then hurtle the aircraft to a completely different piece of the sky, pretty much instantly. In point of fact, the Typhoon is designed to be unstable. As good as Nathan is, if he tried to fly without the computers things wouldn't go well; the instability is actually honed into agility and you'll see, as he lights up the afterburners and renders the laws of physics optional, what the phrase 'handles like a fly' actually means.


Five years ago the Typhoon's first appearance was the miraculous piece of good fortune which made this Airshow leap into the highest echelons. We really don't know what we've done so right to deserve a fifth year, we're just immensely grateful that Turbo and the team are coming back to set off every alarm in the area.





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