Farnborough Air Show 08

Well, I've done one of the things on my list of things to do before I die. Today I hit the Farnborough Air Show. That was a total blast. For those not in the know, this air show is for companies to come together to show off their new stuff. There were 3 exhibitions halls full of exhibitors showing off their wares. Naturally the USAF and NASA were present. There were heaps of planes to see, combat and civilian, a Eurofighter Typhoons, an F/A 18 Super Hornet, F-16 Falcon, F15 Eagle, a pair of Mig 29s and assorted others.

The main attraction of this show has to be of course the air displays. There was a very long list of them but I'll run through a few of my favourites. The absolute cap of the displays was by the legendary Red Arrows. These guys are one of the best aerobatics teams in the world. They fly these little planes call Hawks made by British Aerospace. I'll post some pics up of what they performed. Their formation flying was simply outstanding. Another thing was, this was my first full experience of being in the middle of a sonic boom. This is the monstrous air ripping sound you get when a plane breaches the sound barrier and when the entire flight of Hawks were going, all 9 of them, the sound was tremendous.

Next up, the demonstration by the Eurofighter Typhoon. This is the latest aircraft to join the Royal Air Force. It is a beautiful plane and somehow was even louder than all the Hawks combined. It rolled, weaved, climbed and banked with awesome power.

Then came the F16. This has been the USAF's main fighter for years, soon to be replaced by the F22s. This is put simply one of the most maneuvrable fighters in the world. It tore up the sky all the while it's engine was shredding my brain.

Following on was the Super Hornet. This plane now serves in the USAF and the US Navy. It's more powerful than the F16 but not as maneuvrable. I was wincing in pain when this thing flew past. It was LOUD. One of the more impressive tricks was to put itself at a relly steep angle to the direction of travel, the angle of attack. Most planes stall when this happens, but this baby just ripped from that back into full speed without breaking a sweat.

The Avro Vulcan. This is Britain's only big nuclear bomber it built during the early 80s. It is enormous. It looks like a giant triangle and it flies like a fighter pulling turns and banks like it was a quarter of the size it was. One these big birds took off from the UK and, making an inflight refuel, flew to the Falkland Islands during the war of the same name to do a massive bombing attack. It was mainly done to show that Britain's arm could reach a long way. It was a not so subtle threat telling the argentinians that their home land could easily come under attack as well. It was very impressive to watch this big fatass fly around.

The Rockwell B1-B. This is one of the prettier big bombers in the world. The Russians copied its shape when the Tupovlev company made their version. It's a sleak swing wing bomber that was the predecessor to the wedge shaped B2 that we all know of. This plane was only doing a fly by but it was incredible to watch. It did one pass with its wings open and another with its wings swung back. It was doing 800kph at that point.

The most impressive flight was by the A380. This thing is HUGE but the pilot flew it like it was a quarter of the size it was. Its turning circle was incredibly tight and its banking turns were fast. It's damned maneuvrable for a plane its size. There was rowsing applause when the pilot landed it.

There was a flight by an Apache chopper and a Boeing tilt rotor, kinda like the Ospreys and many others. All in all it was a lovely day although it started out by raining but then the sun came out and I've now got a mild sun burn to the face. Brian looks like a tomato, he's so burned. I'll put up some pics soon.

Something more important to talk about

I don't think I'll bother blogging about Bordeaux, the last stop on my trip. Mainly because there's nothing much to blog about. However, here is something that I'm sure is close to everyone's hearts... well stomachs anyway.

Recently near where I'm staying in Wokingham a seafood restaurant opened up. Part of a chain called Loch Fyne. Naturally, when you think "chain restaurant eh, how good can it be??" One thing that a large chain can do, though, is pour a reasonable amount of money into ensuring a good supply of ingredients, should they choose to. I can safely report that this place is FRICKIN AWESOME. The food is top notch. According to their promotional stuff, they have their own smoke house and fish supply meaning..yep... they smoke their own salmon, trout etc.


This was my entree, a Bradan Orach. I swoon just thinking about it. This plate is a piece of lightly smoked salmon on the far left. Going anti-clockwise around there are 3 types of smoked salmon. The difference is in the length of time they've been smoked. The one to the lower right has been smoked for 12hours, up from that the fish was smoked for 18hrs and the top left one has been smoked for 24hours. I can only say again that this was fantastic. The biggest piece was very fishy in flavour, but the smokiness was very delicate. The first piece of salmon is similar to what we get back home, but going around, the smokiness intensifies. Not just that the flavour of the salmon is enhanced substantially.

Now then, this was my main, a Bradan Rost. This is kiln-roasted salmon, which is then char-grilled and served with a shellfish mushroom and whiskey sauce.

The fish was incredibly intense in flavour and quite salty too. The sauce was delectably sweet. Sort of creamy. It went beautifully with the mussels, which were tiny and had a lovely strong mussell-y flavour too. Sounds obvious, but sometimes the bigger the servings the more dispersed the flavour is. It doesn't look like much, but it was very filling.


Now onto something else. This was what I made for myself for dinner last night.



This was a sage and tomato sauce with chicken pieces served over linguine. I scratch made the sauce. No crushed tomatoes or anything out of a bottle. 5 tomatoes, 1 onion and about 200g of diced chicken chunks.

Evaluation: Not bad, the chicken was a bit overcooked and 1 onion was too much. Flavour wise it wasn't too bad. Chicken isn't particularly good to use to intensify sauce flavour. I should have used some sort of seafood mix or beef, but since I had neither I had to make do. The linguine however was done to perfection, which is a good thing since I managed to screw up last time i made linguine.

Till next time on Benny's Kitchen Experiments!