Southport Air Show Queerie

[stearman]

Wondering if anyone can help me put a date to a photo ?

Noted at an Airshow at Southport in (?), on the beach (Wet), was a pitts Special marked up as 'G-OGEE', in 'Motorola & one-2-one' colours, it was an S.1 (single seater), can anyone out there identify which year it was, and also which aircraft it was.

It wasn't the real G-OGEE S.2B (Twin seater), as that was in the flying display.

Regards

David Chadwick

[viscount]

Just got back to Liverpool. Taken a few hours to find the answer - which is the year 2000, a little more recent than I anticipated.

As a matter of background, the first Southport Seafront Air Display was in 1991. From 1993 it was a two day event. There was no Air Display in 1997 due to seawall re-construction. The really wet weekends were in 2000 (when the Sea King sank to its axles) and 2010 (Sunday cancelled). While this year was the 20th Anniv, 2011 will be the 20th year of Southport seafront Air Shows.

When I eventually modernise and can join my PC to hardware and broadband, including making up my mind as to which slide/photo scanner to buy, one of my first major forum projects could well be a review of all Southport Air Shows 1991-2010.

'Stearman' - nice to see you back posting on this forum a year on, I trust the answers and photos to your question regarding colour schemes on Liverpool based Stearman were of interest.

[viscount]

The list in 'North West Air News' - at that time a paper based magazine, provides details of the aircraft at the Southport Air Show for 9th September 2000. There is, however, no written comment, although from another source it was a very wet year - which water-logged the beach sand rather than affected the actual flying.

Southport Air Show, 9.9.00

On beach

G-NAAA Bo.105DBS/4 AA Air Ambulance
'G-OGEE' Pitts S-1D (really G-BRZL)
G-WLMS Mainair Blade 912
XZ922/701-PW Sea King HAS.6 RN, 819 Sqdn
ZJ278/78 Squirrel HT.1 DHFS

Flying Only

G-BWFM Yak-50
G-BYVR Grob G.115E CFS/3 FTS
G-IIZI Extra EA.300
G-JALC Boeing 757-225 Airtours International
G-MIII Extra EA.300/L
G-OGEE Pitts S-2A (the real one!!)
G-YYYY MH.1521M Broussard
NX448AG/17 FG-1D Corsair US Navy shades of blue colours
N5057V PT-13D & N54922 N2S-4 both Super Stearman 'Utterly Butterly' team
WK163 (G-BVWC) Canberra B.6 (mod)
XF516/19 G-BVVC) Hunter F.6A
XV306 C-130K Hercules C.1 LTW. Op from Liverpool Airport
XX156/227/233/237/253/260/264/292/306/307/308 all BAe Hawk T.1 of 'Red Arrows' - 9 drawn from 11.
ZA613/TL Tornado GR.1 15(R) Sqdn 1915-2000 anniv tail colours
ZA947/YS-H Dakota C.3 BBMR
ZE292/AZ Tornado F.3 56(R) Sqdn
ZG859/91 Harrier GR.7 4 Sqdn standard scheme
472218/WZ-I (G-HAEC) CA-18 Mustang 22 'Big Beautiful Doll'
28693/G (SE-DXY) Vampire FB.6

I don't have lists for the next few years handy, though I suspect that G-OGEE only appeared on the beach just the once.

I was there in 2000, highlights being a spirited display by the Airtours Boeing 757 - not a regular air show display 'act' while the Swedish Vampire never became common sight at UK shows.