My first visit to the “Flying Show”
Simon and I decided to visit the flying show on Saturday 30 November 2013, we are both relatively new to microlighting and thought this would be a good way to get a broader view of the sport and a fun day out.
We drove up to the NEC and packed in the car park signed for the show, a tip for future years would be to park in the Birmingham international train station car park, as it is half the price and short covered walk to the NEC! Car parking at the NEC was £10 per car per day.
We didn’t know what to expect from the show, not having been before, but had been told in previous years it have not filled the hall, this year and possible previous years, it was in hall 12 and it pretty much filled the hall to capacity.
Overall we enjoyed the show with its display of light and Microlight aeroplanes a few gliders, quite a few flex wing and a health number of impressive looking gyrocopters. Also in there were displays of radio controlled aeroplanes and helicopters both static and flying, a racing car and GoCycle with a short test track!
I was looking to buy a couple of things from the show but ended up buying just a chart, from what we could see from the Flight Store, AFE and Pooleys stands the only saving to be had was on the postage, I had hoped for a bit of a deal! Maybe there was on some of the items, but not the things we were looking at. If you were joining the BMAA they were offering a good £10 discount for people signing up on the day, it would be good to have some more show only deals.
There was a lot to see and do and we enjoyed chatting to various people and looking over the aeroplanes on display, however we were both a bit disappointed in the number of different fix wing Microlights on display, there was a few, but we would have like to have seen more manufactures displaying their planes at the show so future (hopefully future!) pilots like us could get a better idea of what we might want buy once qualified.
Will we return next year, possibly, I’m undecided at this point in time, for me if there was an increase in the fixed wing microlight displays, preferably by the manufactures, then I think I would certainly go again.
Below is a gallery of pictures from the show for you to browse.