I was third in the line at the time waiting to enter 34. The Mustang stated I think three, at least two times he had to go as he was starting to over heat. He was stationed behind the keys lined up for 34. The early mod Jab first in line at the time, taxis out onto 34 and line up. The Mustang says he has to go and powers on unaware there is an A/C in front of him. Luckily he is made aware there is a aircraft in front of him, he swerves to the right just missing the Jab by inches. The Jab thinks he is hit and rolls of to the left hand side of the strip. The mustang and Kittyhawk taxi back to cool down. From where I was and that was very close it looked like it was a miss. I could be wrong.
The Jametown airshow would be the best country airshow around. Stuf ups like this can only lead to the demise of such events.
Insurance companies won't want cover such events or make the cost prohibitive and let's not forget there's a lot of money tied up here, or we're going to all have binoculars to get a glimps of these beautiful aircraft.
I haven't got the answers but I think three things should have happened in this situation.
(1) The Jab jockey should have known and taken on board the heating problems of the warbirds, wait and let them depart. A couple of minutes at best. Very inconsiderate I thought.
(2) The Mustang could have positioned himself at an angle to 34 so he hade a good view of the strip before rolling.
(3) There should have been a marshal at the runway access point where both lots of traffic were converging.
No exaggeration here. That Jab was so close to becoming confetti and had the Mustang pilot not handled the aircraft the way he did it might have been a different outcome for a few of us in the line up. And that would have pissed me off and spoilt an otherwise excellent airshow. Thank you Jamestown and I hope this incident does not deter the owners of these beautiful aircraft making them available for us tradgics to view.