WITH blue skies and light winds, 340 aircraft arrived at Popham on the Saturday, making it one of the best ever – even if it meant more go-arounds than landings at one stage.

Full report and photos in your next MF, but in the meantime, here’s a taster from Martin Blandy, aka YouTuber Stratotramp, and BMAA Chairman Tim Burrow, on what makes Popham pop.

Also at the show, Pooley’s, in celebration of its 65th anniversary, presented a £750 award to the most worthy student pilot, the winner being Adam Philips after being nominated by his instructor Brian Palfreyman.

AFTER being grounded in Heraklion, Greece for over a month after Fedex lost the documents he needed, 16-year-old Mack Rutherford was due to set off for Alexandria in Egypt in his bid to become the youngest pilot to fly solo around the world.

He set off from Sofia on 23 March in a Shark 600kg light sport microlight, flying the opposite direction to his big sister Zara, 19, who landed back at Kortrijk in Belgium in a Shark in January after setting two world records – the youngest woman to fly solo around the world, and the first to do it in a microlight.

HONESTLY, that Mikey McMahon’s never done enjoying himself: after flying a Shark in Portugal, he’s only gone off to Slovakia for a tour of the Shark Aero factory – and of course he just had to go for a flight in the company demonstrator afterwards. It would have been rude not to.

Read all about it in your next MF, but in the meantime, here’s his vlog from the trip. And from Facebook it now looks like he’s learning to fly a Spitfire. Is there no end to his budget?

RON Haslam is best known as a very successful MotoGP and TT racer, not to mention the father of World Superbikes star Leon.

But he also flew a Renegade Spirit biplane, so naturally when he bought it he replaced the two-stroke engine with a BMW RT1200 bike powerplant. Spotted by Robert Hood, it’s for sale for £16,000 on…

“If memory serves me well, Ron had one of the first X-airs in the UK, which was fitted with a Simonini racing engine,” said Courtney Chambers.

THE attention to detail in this 70% replica of the P-51 Mustang by German company Scale Wings is astonishing – and it sounds as good as it looks. The quick-build kit is £99,000 plus engine and avionics.

If you prefer something more, er, rugged, US startup ScaleBirds has a 60% scale Curtiss P-36.

If you’re anything like the editor, you’re constantly amazed at how the US went from producing fat ugly ducklings like that, the P-47 and even the chunky Harvard, to the sleek Mustang.

WIND 20 knots gusting 32? Pah! Nothing to a man like Deepak Mahajan, as he takes off for a rather, er, interesting circuit in the Pipistrel Velis Electro. Deepak, we salute you! (Even if you are obviously bonkers).

THE FAA has withdrawn the licence of Trevor Jacob, the Californian pilot and YouTuber who it says intentionally bailed out of a perfectly good vintage Taylorcraft in a bid to get his video of it viral.

Which it did, getting 2.5M views, including a load of abuse from viewers.

THE Hawker Hurricane is the sad sister of the more glamorous Spitfire, so it’s a rare treat to see one flying.

Here’s cool as a Canadian cucumber test pilot Dave Hadfield making the first flight in a 1942 Mark XII one after a 16-year restoration.

A HUB for future air taxis and delivery drones has opened to the public in Coventry.

 

The Air-One site will host demonstrator flights and outline how to control aircraft.