Meeting a Super Guppy, Bruntingthorpe

Meeting a Super Guppy

As you know my son is obsessed with vehicles and his aircraft passion seems to have gone skywards in recent weeks – probably a result of our visit to the local airfield and to the Air Tattoo at Fairford.  He watched a TV programme on the Discovery Channel a while ago with Daddy P, and since then he’s always talking about Super Guppy’s.  I had no idea what it was, let alone what it looked like!  Anyway, Daddy P had been surfing the net and he’d discovered an event last Sunday that he thought my son would like – we would be meeting a Super Guppy.  Not any old Super Guppy, but the self, same Super Guppy that he had seen on the TV programme.

You can imagine how excited a certain little boy was as we made our way to Bruntingthorpe for their Cold War Jets Open Day.  They only have 2 a year, so we were very lucky.  There were a number of static displays and also a number of aircraft that would be running down the long runway (they don’t take off – too expensive to run).

Bruntingthorpe Aerodrome is home to the Cold War Jet Collection including a Victor, Hunter, Canberra, Comet, 2 off Lightnings , Starfighter, Mystere, Sea Vixen, 4 off Buccaneers, 4 off Jet Provosts, Super Guppy, Iskra and a Jaguar. April 2010 saw a Nimrod MR2 arrive at the airfield. The latest aircraft to join the museum fleet are a Sea Harrier and  an ex Boscombe Down 2 seat Jaguar, both arriving in April 2012.

Our first stop, was, of course, that static Super Guppy – I took one look and knew exactly how it got its name!  It was huge too.  You could go inside – £1.00 for adults, kids free, Daddy P was off inside like a shot, but we couldn’t persuade my son to join him, a shame, but never mind.

Meeting a Super Guppy, Bruntingthorpe

There were a number of other aircraft to look at, and some others you could go inside.  We then went up close to the runway, got my son to wear his ear defenders and watched some of the Cold War Jets do everything except for take off.  Nothing could prepare us for the noise of the 2 Lightnings – as they passed us on the runway, the noise quite literally swept you off your feet.  Amazing.  So glad we’d brought his ear defenders with us!

We had a picnic and an ice cream and enjoyed ourselves.  It was a very unusual day and the time was just right to make the most of his current obsession.

It was a really interesting day, he was in his element after meeting a Super Guppy and all the other aircraft.  Needless to say, ever since Sunday he has been re-enacting the day over and over again 🙂

7 thoughts on “Meeting a Super Guppy

  1. Sounds like you had a great day 🙂 my hubby is the crew chief on the Guppy at Bruntingthorpe, there’s another open day on 25th May 🙂

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