The Magic Number '8'

Too busy to post lately but finding time to draw breath, today was unusual with two ladies named 'Helen' being proposed to at different points across the country in the same hour by different aircraft!

If that isn't unusual enough then there's a third Helen coming-up in the next week, so another proposal surprise in store, which I hope will keep our 100% record.

Of course, 08/08/08 was a big day for weddings, as well as the Olympic Games and despite some rather nasty weather, we managed to achieve all of our flights on time. Tomorrow, Sunday, isn't looking so good, with a flight booked over the Climate Camp in Kent and a second banner over Ashford, with 40mph winds and rain forecast.

It's been a very difficult summer so far, with weather that has been more autumnal than August. with both Reading and Leeds festivals in a week, let's hope for a ray of sunshine before the summer disappears altogether.

Messerschmitt 108 at Sywell

We did rather wonder what the ME108 was doing parked next to our aircraft at Northampton's Sywell airfield last week, with TV cameras and a yellow WW II Harvard trainer in close support.

Now we know. The Times newspaper was running a story on the predecessor of the famous ME 109 but it's a pity the author can't spell 'Messerschmitt'.

Giles, the auther conveniently describes the sever cloudburst that prevented us towing a wedding banner just next door to the airfield:

"Now that we were airborne, pulling Gs seemed mercifully out of the question. A wall of black cloud was marching in from the West. We levelled out at 1200 feet and James muttered something into his headset. “What was that?” He’d been telling Air Traffic Control we were going straight back down."

You can find The Times ME108 video story here.

Is it Safe?

Google has arbitrarily decided that our website at http://www.airads.co.uk/ may be unsafe. It actually hasn't said why and has forced us on a circuitous route which involved uploading an HTML file which proves that we actually own the website rather than the Shanghai mafia.

The trouble is, that it will take some weeks I understand before the 'Googlebot' revisits and clears the offending tags and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it other thanassure visitors that http://www.airads.co.uk/ which is hosted by UK company ShopCreator, appears to be perfectly safe and owned and administered by us.

Here, in in conclusion is the result of a McAfee site scan of the main website: "We tested this site (airads.co.uk) and didn't find any significant problems."

More information at

http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/airads.co.uk"

Womad and Tolpuddle Weekend

It’s Tolpuddle time again. This weekend Airads has two aircraft up simultaneously over the Tolpuddle Martyrs anniversary rally.

Organised by the TUC, this festival takes place in the village of Tolpuddle, Dorset and takes place from Friday the 18th to Sunday the 20th July. One of the banners we are flying is for the RMT Union – we flew it at the miners march in Durham last week – and one is for the Community trades union.

Last year the weather was pretty miserable on the same occasion and so we are hoping for clear skies, for a change this summer at least.

On Saturday we are at Kemble and operating around Swindon, advertising the Womad, ‘Charlton Park 2008 Festival’ which takes place between 25th and 27th July at Malmesbury in Wiltshire.

A Little Luck

Two proposals in ninety minutes today over Whitstable and Southend. I hope to have the video available here soon!

With the strong westerly winds today I had thought the chances of flying any banners today were poor but we had a little luck and Leysdown airfield on the Isle of Sheppey was sheltered enough for us to pull it off.

A Trades Union march at Sevenoaks tomorrow makes for a complete contrast to the sound of wedding bells in the air!

Short and Simple

It looks as if the July Tolpuddle Martyr's Rally this year is going to be a busy event with two banners to fly for Trades Unions this time.

The RMT Union have opted for one of our largest and a recommendation for clients is that letters be at least 5' tall to be easily read from the ground. There's sometimes a temptation to cram in as big a message as possible into an aircraft banner without realising that small type is very difficult to see fromt he ground.

Keep it short and simple and that, in our experience normally works the best!

"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.