The Tiger Club’s Turbulent Display Team is one of the longest-established flying display teams in the world, started in 1959. Balloon bursting
The Tiger Club’s Turbulent Display Team is one of the longest-established flying display teams in the world. Since 1959, the Turbs have been an integral part of the Tiger Club’s famously colourful contribution to light aviation, during which time the team has brought the excitement of its energetic and flamboyant low-level displays to audiences at hundreds of airshows and events at home and abroad. According to Tiger Club lore, the tenor of the Turb Team was set way back in ‘61, when a nine strong team displayed on the public days at the Farnborough Air Show. “Do you come to Farnborough often?” one of the team members was asked by a show-goer. “Only in the formating season,” he replied. And, really, that’s all you need to know about the team: we take our flying and the audience’s entertainment very seriously, but never ourselves. Instead, the Turb Team prides itself on being amateurs in the very best traditions of the word: practiced, enthusiastic, and dedicated to sharing the fun of flying. D31 Turbulents - characterful single-seaters which, though French by design, are very much English by adoption. The first example of Roger Druine’s aircraft flew in 1953, and such was the appeal of the Turb’s open cockpit and exuberant nature that by 1959 British versions had made themselves at home with the Tiger Club. Powered by a 1600cc engine, weighing around 350lbs empty, and with a wingspan of just over 21ft, the Turb is little more than a flying motorbike - one whose lively handling not only encouraged the creation of the display team, but also made it the agent provocateur in countless Tiger Club escapades. In 1960, for example, the Duke of Edinburgh took himself off in G-APNZ, making the Turbulent the first and only single-seat aircraft to have been flown by a member of the royal family. Of the twenty nine D31 and three D31A Turbulents built by Rollason Aircraft & Engines at Croydon Airport, the Tiger Club has been a home to at least 18. Balloon bursting illustrated
Size: 3999px × 2651px
Location: Shoreham, West Sussex, UK
Photo credit: © Avpics / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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