Military Jet Flypasts

glow worm

We live on the approach path to Biggin Hill Airport (a famous WW2 fighter station in its day) and they held their annual "Festival Of Flight" the other weekend.

So I set up the Zoom H2 in the back garden, pointing straight up at the sky, set to Mid / Side, with the levels turned up half way and the stereo spread to 150 deg.

I managed to catch the Red Arrows display team twice (once in two groups, then all together later on) and a Eurofighter Typhoon FGR4 towards the end of the day.

The Red Arrows use training jets (BAe Hawks) and came out a little on the soft side, so were boosted with Amplify in Audacity (it seems to give a more natural sound than Normalisation). The Eurofighter (being a real fighter jet) came out badly clipped, so I fixed it - not with Audacity's Clip Fix function, but by splitting the tracks, going through them in fine detail and applying Repair to each clipped peak and trough, individually. It took a few hours over a few evenings and obviously isn't perfect, but I think it's come out OK.

I've left fairly generous tails before and after each flypast, which include a bit of general, suburban noise.

PS - Play LOUD! shakng2