Farnborough Air Show

Last weekend I went to the Farnborough Air Show.

I was actually hoping to have put together some pics but I just haven't had time (more on that next week).

Having lived and worked in and around this area for around 13 years I've never been to Farnborough.  Well, I've been to Farnborough, but I've never been to the air show.  In my defence a while back it did become bi-annual.  However, with my imminent switch of profession I figured I should go.

It was really rather good, if long and tiring.  It was pretty good value overall, though - the tickets were expensive (£40 on the door) but you got good value.

I have to say I wasn't expecting it to be so... big.  I've been to air shows before - Biggin Hill in particular - and the focus is pretty squarely on the air displays.  There are usually two types - ones where they basically just fly about and the others where they do proper displays.

Okay, both are proper displays and are planned out in detail, but what I mean is that in the former they run the aircraft through a few things it can do, but in the aerobatic displays they do tricks and put on a deliberately complex "show".  I'm sure you get what I mean.  And of course some of the fighters are able to do clever things, so it's not really a hard and fast line.

There was a nice blend of the two.  In particular there was a focus some of the more unusual and distinctive aircraft for the basic displays and then they had really good aerobatics.  They key was that there was a nice mix of the two.

Particular highlights included the Osprey, which is the new tilt-rotor.  It's really big, which I wasn't expecting and looks weird in either "mode".  When the rotors are up it looks like a Chinook they accidentally built sideways and when they're down it looks like a plane where they forgot to put the wings on.  The rotors are enormous - each blade is more than 30 feet long.

Another highlight was the A380, which is just bonkers huge.  You almost can't believe it will get into the air, but it actually took off in quite a short distance.  It also did a really slow pass where it just seems to defy gravity.

They also had a "functional" display for the Tornado where they pretended to blow stuff up on the runway, but the bangs were really loud and made everyone jump a few times.

The F18 Super Hornet was also quite impressive - I didn't really know much about it before, but it's a really agile aircraft.  And of course there were the Red Arrows who did a full display and were very impressive.  It's been a while since I've seen them do a full display.

But I mentioned it being big - there were a huge number (something like 80-odd) aircraft on display.  I got there pretty early and went around and saw most of them.  This was where I discovered my first cock-up.

When I'd packed my bag I'd done my favourite trick of packing too much so it was heavy.  I therefore dumped a few things and one of these was my spare camera battery.  I'd recharged (or so I thought) them the night before and figured one battery would last.

Trouble was as soon as I started using it the battery reported being almost empty.  As such it had run out and wouldn't take any more pictures by the time I got half way through.

Luckily I had my phone so I used the camera on that to take a few pics, but I therefore didn't bother at all during the air displays.

The other cock-up was wearing shorts and dumping the jumper I'd packed.  It was surprisingly chilly for the most part although, weirdly, I got sunburnt!  I guess the sun was strong when it was out (plus we've not really seen the sun for me to build up any sort of resistance) but it wasn't actually warm.

But as well as the aircraft on display, which took me all morning to go around they had an "innovation zone" and a "space zone".  I paid these brief visits.  The space one was a bit rubbish, but the innovation one looked good, although I realised there just wasn't going to be the time to go around.

Quite how people find the time on the trade days when all the big halls are opened too I don't know.

treading water

It feels a lot like I'm just treading water until the Chrimbo holidays at the moment.

My first day of proper holiday is the 22nd, but with the weekend before it means my last day of work is on the 19th, so there's only next week to go.

Also, the office is now virtually dead - most everybody's on contract so that adds to the "end of term" feeling.

I've also kinda become disinterested in doing much of anything in my spare time and I think that's down to the approaching holidays too. I keep finding myself thinking "well, why bother doing it now - I can do it when I'm off in a couple of weeks."

Trouble with that, of course, is that I'm going to have tonnes to do over Christmas and New Year (what with it being Christmas and New Year :/) so it's not good for me to put off even more stuff to do then as well.

What makes it all worse if I'm so bloody tired - it's really difficult to get a good nights sleep when it's so cold like this. I may just break the bank and get more electricity (I'm on a meter thing) so I can at least not freeze to death - bugger the financials, I'll sort that out later.

salvation

Loan documents turned up last night, finally.

I was beginning to get more than a little worried as the end of the month approached. If it isn't all set up by then, things could get a little hairy for me.

My other irons in the fire seem to be bearing some fruit as well, though again, they seem to have taken an awfully long time to get there. I dunno, maybe it's just because of the pressure situation that it's seemed that way.

Luckily this month I'm sorta okay because pay day happens to be a bit earlier (for reasons there's no point detailing) but it does mean I get a little bit of wiggle room in terms of timing. If it was next month, I'd be in deep shit.

I'm hoping to have a fairly relaxing weekend this weekend. My only real goal is to get some site updates under way again. It's been too long since I actively updated my sites.

The problem is there's never enough time to do all the hobbies I have. For example, just recently I've been reading a lot, which means other things have to drop out to make room for it. But that means they start building up.

It's like I've done virtually no walling for what must be the best part of 6 months. But then where would I have found the time?

Part of me wants to scale back--give greater focus to fewer things. The problem is it's the variety that's a big part of what makes the individual things fun. If I spent all my time on one or two things, I'd become bored very quickly and then end up doing other stuff anyway.