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.