Farnborough Air Show

20th July 2008

Although he has lived in and around Farnborough for more than thirty years, Ian had never been to the Air Show and as our friends were not able to take their bus to Alton for the Rally scheduled for the very same day we decided we had left too long a gap since last taking a look at the flying display. Rosemary and Malcolm first attended way back in 1949 and Malcolm had last seen it in 1983.

It ‘only’ took an hour and a half to do the 20 minute journey from Rosemary’s home to the airfield including queuing for 45 minutes to get parked on Queen’s Parade, Aldershot, which is only a short walk from the airfield. We first took a quick look around the exhibition marquees to see its vast scale but most of the exhibitors had gone home and there was little of great interest to us there.

The first plane up was the Airbus 380 which was quite big followed by something at the other end of the size scale, the Eurofighter Typhoon which was both fast and noisy.

We took a picnic but the weather forecast was wrong. It was cloudy and just a little chilly at times. The R.A.F. Memorial Flight (Hurricane, Lancaster and Spitfire) passed by several times and the recently restored Avro Vulcan was possibly the most interesting part of the display. The Vulcan was restored by volunteer aircraft enthusiasts.

Carol, Rosemary, Malcolm and Ian.

The American Consolidated Catalina and the R.A.F. Red Arrows aerobatic display team.

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