We went off to Farnborough for the air show today.  I had not been to one before because, although I like planes, I only really have a casual interest in them and figured that air shows were just for the hardcore aviation enthusiasts.

It turns out I got it wrong – anyone can enjoy them, but the danger is that you will end up as a hardcore plane-spotter!

I took the camera along, not expecting too much by way of results.  A compact digital camera with a measly 3x optical zoom is going to going to take a lot of pictures that are just tiny dark dots in a large sky, and I did get quite a few of those, but there were also some I was quite pleased with.  Even better, I finally had a chance to use the binoculars that I got for Christmas last year.

I was quite excited with anticipation of two things about this show: seeing the Airbus A380 in action and seeing the newly restored Vulcan bomber actually flying.  Neither disappointed, but there were plenty of surprises as well.  The first was as we were entering the place and an American jet fighter took off.  The noise was astonishing and then immediately amusing as umpteen car alarms all went off together as a consequence.

I had not been prepared for the sheer scale of the event.  We drove there and the entire area had its roads re-configured for the duration, with police directing traffic and excellent temporary signage up everywhere.  We parked in an enormous field, where many stewards guided us and were then herded onto one of a continuous stream of shuttle buses to go to the main gate.  Very impressive organisation.

As we were there at the invitation of Thales we went to their exhibition space, which we all agreed must have been the best in the place – a four-storey building with exhibitions on the ground floor, meeting rooms on a mezzanine, a restaurant above that and a top-floor bar with terrace overlooking the airfield.  The terrace had the best view of the show it was possible to have.  The pavilion was crowded with kids who were taking part in some sort of competition.  I think they were from schools either local to Farnborough or to Thales facilities and it was good to see the company with an eye on attracting future talent and not just concentrating on short-term sales targets.

We had a couple of cokes and watched the Red Arrows do a display.   What they do is so unfeasible that I can only believe it is possible because I have seen it: I would not believe it otherwise.  Perfect formation at high speeds, no margin for error, they even take off in formation so close they are almost touching.

In a world where two planes getting within half a mile counts as a near miss incident it is breathtaking to see such manoeuvres.  It truly makes you proud to be British: they have to be the best in the world. Another source of national pride is the Spitfire, and it was great to see one of those flying around.

What I was waiting for was the A380 and it was worth the wait.  It is the aeronautical equivalent of the fat bloke who is a surprisingly good dancer and light on his feet.  It is such a huge plane but it took off in a very short distance, climbing more steeply than you would have thought possible, before going into a series of banks and turns that are more becoming of a small stunt plane.  It must be great for the pilots to have the chance to do all that – they won’t be able to do it with passengers on board.

And it was so quiet: it hardly seemed to make a sound. Jayne was totally gobsmacked when she saw the initial climb.  Time to be hugely proud to be European, and that continued with the appearance of the Eurofighter.

It was not as impressive as the F-22 Raptor (which was sadly not present for the public days) but a lot better than I expected.  It was follo

wed by an F-16 and an F-18 and all three were remarkable for how much they could do, and how slow they could go when they needed to.  These things appear to break the laws of physics by being able to turn on a sixpence.  Probably something to do with thrust vectoring…

There was a tilt rotor machine as well, which can work like a turbo prop plane but swivel its wings so the propellors point up and then work like a helicopter.  We enjoyed that, and then came something we enjoyed a lot more than we could have hoped for – the C-27J cargo plane.  Its a big utility plane for shifting cargo or carrying casualties or troops.  It should not have been able to do stunts, but it did – including a knife-edge pass.

So many good things.  I could go on for ages, but the highlight was seeing that Vulcan fly.  It has spent nearly ten years being restored and is now the only Vulcan able to fly.  It only recently got complete and certifiedand made its first public flight only two weeks ago.  Its big, graceful, and good-looking, but you can really tell the differe

nce between it and the modern planes.  No way could it have done the sort of things that even the Airbus was doing, but like the dancing bear of legend it is not that it danced well but that it could dance at all- not that it danced too badly mind.

Getting home was more of a challenge.  The bus shuttle service worked well enough but the parking field was total chaos.  All those stewards were nowhere to be seen. They were all at the gates, but there was nobody to stop the middle of the field becoming the mother of all traffic jams.  It took us more than an hour to get out of that field.  I can now understand how some cars ended up stuck all night trying to get out of the car park at Knebworth after the Robbie Williams concert.

But we had such a good time during the day that we were able to stay quite relaxed about the whole thing.  We saw lots of neat planes, Jayne and Chrystal nabbed lots of free bags, pens, and other stuff (they both agree that the Thales bags were the best), and I even got a sun tan somehow. When we were driving through torrents at 8:30am we all thought the day would be a wash-out but it didn’t rain at all while we were there.

My only regret was not being able to join my colleagues in Horsham to go out and talk to voters in the Carfax, but the airshow only comes round every two years and I may not ever get the chance to sample corporate hospitality at the event so I had to seize the day.

Despite a camera not really suited to snapping planes in flight I took more than 80 photos – at least a third of them featuring the A380 -and I was happy with quite a few of them.  Most are online at Flickr.