"Show Us Your Hooters" Ladies - Isle of Wight Festival 2008

A bizarre message on the first banner of the Sunday at the 2008 'Isle of Wight Festival'.
"Clare & Anna Show Us Your Hooters!"

But what can it mean I wonder?

Anyway, 'Hooters' aside, we flew the 'Welovefestivals.com' banner too and I've loaded seventy aerial photographs of the festival from both days for you to see here on Flickr.com and a complete video will be up on YouTube in the next couple of days. Come back here to find the link or look for 'AiradsUK' on YouTube.

If you have any photos of your own of the aircraft in flight over the festival, please send them along to info@airads.eu

You can also find the story and photos on The Isle of Wight Beacon website here.



Pictured, me doing some planning at Bembridge and today's co-pilot Charles. I quite forgot to take a photo of Co-pilot Jason yesterday, so next time mate!

Lucky in Love at The Isle of Wight Festival

Three banners over the Isle of Wight Festival this afternoon and I hope to have a video, taken from above, up on YouTube in the next couple of days, so watch this space.

Today we had John propose to Grete and then surprise, surprise, Grete propose to John, followed by a final message to Jacqui to round off the day. You can see this clip here on Meridian News Tonight.

It was one of those remarkable coincidences that two people chose an aircraft banner to propose to each other on he same afternoon and I'm sure, it went down well with the 30,000 or more people milling around below.

John emailed us afterwards with this message: "Just a short note to say thanks for a fantastic day for Grete and I, One that we will never forget thanks to you guys. So glad you got me up first followed by Grete, awesome. Many thanks"!

Back to the island on Sunday then, to tow a banner for two hours over the event with the message "Welovefestivals.com".

Give us a wave!

Hull's Tigers Promoted with an Airads Banner from KAROO

A dramatic flight for a client over the city of Hull this afternoon, with the message: "CONGRATULATIONS CITY FROM KAROO" as the population celebrated their promotion to the Premier League. (see newspaper report)

Around 50,000 fans squeezed into Queen Victoria Square and from above the streets appeared packed, all the way from the football ground.

The flight itself was a matter of luck. The strong wind conditions were arguably 'out of bounds' but fortune smiled on the attempt and the banner was airborne on time.

Small Arrow

Not a great Bank Holiday weekend. Two days work in Skegness postponed until July and a Saturday wedding in Kent, 'Blown away' by the strong winds. It's always annoying when the 'Great British Summer' starts playing its tricks but let's hope that June wll live up to expectations and that July won't be an unhappy repeat of 2007, with its constant rain and flooding in the South West.

With no scheduled flights on for Airads today, the youngest member of our team, thirteen-year old Charlotte, managed to persuade the Red Arrows to sign her logbook at Manston today. As she's been flying with her father since the tender age of seven, she's planning on a career in aviation and from the photograph, she's obviously making the right friends!

Cannes Film Festival 2008?

No flying today, far too windy and lucky that nothing was booked. We have one aircraft out for its annual service until at least Saturday and the second rapidly running out of working hours until it's own 'Annual' in two weeks.

As these are working aircraft, they are subject to 50 hour servicing and a complete annual maintenance regime every twelve months. Very expensive and they never work out to suit the schedule. Once you reach 50 hours, that's it. Everything stops until the full maintenance check has been done at an authorised engineering facility; and you can't just roll-up like QuickFit!

As there's no flying, I've been playing with the video editing software again; I don't get much chance to experiment. So here's our entry for the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.

Seriously though, we were asked by a client if we could fly the event but French 'Red Tape' stood in the way, which is ironic, in a way, as both my grandparents were big 'Stars' of the pre-war French cinema and one is buried there.

Radio One - A Really 'Big Weekend' with Airads

Two aircraft up simultaneously for several hours above the Radio One 'Big Weekend' today at Mote Park in Maidstone, both promoting different music events for a client.

We are back again on Sunday morning and lunchtime and I hope to be able to put together a short, 'YouTube' video for people to watch.

In the meantime, here's a link to all today's aerial photos of the event, taken as we circled it. The weather was great!

Backing Boris

A frantic rush to an airfield on the Eastern edge of London this morning in time to fly a banner supporting Boris Johnson's campaign for Mayor, today being the big day of the London and local elections.

The thunderstorms presented a bit of a problem, very unusual so early in the day but we got there, flew the banner and hopefully had the photos back in time to meet the Eveing Standard's deadline.

Hard Crew

A frenetic day on Saturday, with the Churchill Estates banner to fly over North London and a second, over Camber Sands, in the afternoon. Showing my age, I won't pretend to understand what the message on the latter: "Bang Face Hard Crew" meant, we just fly them on demand and I certainly wondered what the people on the beach below made of it all.

We used Lydd Airport for the first time in ages to operate from and they were extremely helpful. Below, there's a small YouTube video of the view back into the airport when the job was done.

Next weekend, it's Skegness for two days. Last year, the early Bank Holiday flights were 'Weathered-off' so fingers crossed to avoid disappointment this year.

I'm still amazed that nobody has contacted us over Radio One's 'Big Day' next month, outside Maidstone. With a quarter of a million ticket applications and the event only two minutes flying time away, it's a prime location for aircraft-based advertising.

Final Approach

Up above the Isle of Thanet this morning, testing out the new video camera and having a quick practise session in TG's Piper Arrow. It's a bit quicker than the sedate, banner-towing, Cessnas with a constant speed propellor and a retractable undercarriage but alot of fun once one has the measure of it; it's a bit twitchy at first.

The video, shot by Alasdair Bruce, shows Thanet from above and the approach in Manston airport's runway 28.

A Football Theme

Staying with the football theme - I flew back from Milan with England Manager Fabio Capello last week - The Sport Academy in Loughton, North London, called us at short notice, yesterday, asking us to fly a banner this afternoon, promoting their St George's Day football, 'Fun Day'.

Given that Monday's weather was dire, I didn't have any great hopes that we might be able to do it but today, by remarkable contrast, was like an early summer's day, with glorious sunshine over the south-east of England.

And so it was back to Daymns Hall, now renamed as Hornchurch airfield, to set-up and collect the banner for the 'Fun Day' which all went to plan and included a short YouTube video as well.

We must buy a new camcorder with so many customer videos now going online.

Churchill Lead the Way on Sky News

Great coverage on Sky News this morning for AIRADS client, Churchill Estates, to support the story on the expected Bank of England interest rate cut and the decline in the housing market.

We were up at Rochester yesterday, filming with news editor, Joel Hills and on a glorious spring morning Sky captured some excellent footage of the Churchill banner before we flew off to North London to display it.

At 07:30 this morning I had a call from a delighted Managing Director of Churchill's who had been watching the report on the morning news.

Scenic Disaster

The end of Margate's famous 'Roller Coaster' the 'Scenic Railway' caught by a passing Airads flight on Tuesday.

Police suspect arson and one wonders whether the damage to this historic wooden structure is too much to be repaired?

Watch the Sky

If the weather holds-up this week, Sky News is set to join us for a 'mission' over London and to film a piece on aerial advertising. It's going to take a little arrangement, having the Sky helicopter, the banner aircraft and of course a camera crew and the client, all working together out of Rochester. The latter is presently recovering from the weekend's snowfall and is closed and so we are rather hoping that it will be dry in time to avoid having to think about a "Plan B".

The banner over Everton , for the fans yesterday, Sunday, was a bit of luck, given the weather so Free Tibet's loss was arguably Everton's gain.

Free Tibet

The approaching cold front ruined another weekend's flying. It strikes me that we have had almost five weekends of strong winds with gaps of pleasantly warm Spring weather in-between.

Having gained permission to land late at Rochester this Sunday, we've reached our deadline for a decision and have heard nothing further from one client who asked if we might 'surprise' the finish of the Olympic torch ceremony with a 'FREE TIBET' banner. On a personal note, I think that the message might well have made a more peaceful impact than demonstrators lining the route of the torch relay but then it's not for us to judge such things as we simply facilitate an airborne message request for our clients.