This has always been a major show for me as I live only a few miles away. During the 80's we were actually under the flight path and holding point for the shows aircraft. Farnborough is a part of the Defence Research Agency (DRA) and so has military connections. It is also home to the UK version of the NTSB, where planes which have crashed are brought here and put back together to try and find out what went wrong. The Lockerbie Pan Am 747 which terrorists blew up is here. It is mainly a trade show, selling its military & civilian jets to major companies, but the weekend is open to the public. It is unique in being a bi-annual show, so next year it will be in Paris. Due to the industrial interest there are always military jets and regional/business jets on display. Some of the highlights include the Red Arrows display team, the Russian Antonov and MiGs, and the USAF's F18's. There has even been a U2 bomber and Blackbird here. The star of the 1996 show was the F117 stealth bomber. I only saw it holding over my house but it was an incredible site. When it turned to face you, it could barely be seen, and was quite quiet. It was so secret that it did not land in the UK but was flown over from the states and back again. Rumour has it that it was designed at the Groom Lake Test Facility, a.k.a. Area 51.
This year I went along on a trade day filming for the British Aerospace Aviation Summer Camp. Being a trade day had its pros and cons. First, none of the public displays, such as the Red Arrows, flew, and the show was only 3 hours, compared to the 5 hour public display. On the plus side however is that the main runway was open for us to walk along and actually go inside the aircraft. We went into the cockpit of a C5 (after climbing up a very steep ladder) which is huge, and into the fuselage of the C-17 and C-130J (the new Hercules). We also saw the new Eurofighter flying, which was grounded on the public days.
