21 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

How was it Jon? Worth the effort?

Good timing Ray, just landed back into LHR and recently got to my hotel, back to work and Off to the USA tomorrow.

The honest answer has to be yes, there were some big names there with lots of new hardware too, which as much as I enjoyed the U.K. show , I doubt would ever tempt such big hitters.

I enjoyed it, the museum is good in itself. I got to walk out of one of the upper deck doors of the 747 onto a platform and look back at the unbelievably huge fuselage from a unique angle.I was left scratching my head as to how a 32 year old me was ever given command of something so big.

I have to say AMS puts LHR and MAN to shame, highly efficient and not overcrowded, the exact opposite of our airports.

The 45 minute train ride to Lelystad again put our trains to shame.

From the Station there’s a bus or about €20 in an uber to the Aviodrome.

It was all quite easy and very  pleasant , with the Dutch seeming a very polite, happy and helpful bunch.( my first time visiting)

I did the whole weekend ,arriving Friday night and leaving Sunday evening.

Only 2 minor points of note, one is just a personal thing. I only decided to go 2 weeks ago, by which time the local hotel had been booked up. I found a hotel 10 minutes to the south but there was no way to get there by bus and I couldn’t get an uber on Saturday for about an hour because they were so busy shuttling other people to and from the show I guess. Sunday was a quieter day.

The only  thing which the uk show did better was to block off the hanger just to ticked guests of the flight sim show. The Museum where the weekend was held remained open to the public. The result was almost every high tech sim rig, or in development aircraft ( like the JF F100) was being flown by an eager 8 year old doing 90 degree bank turns on short final as families had come for a day out at the museum and stumbled across flight simulators to play with !

Not wanting to appear grumpy , and it’s good to encourage the young into the hobby etc, but I couldn’t help think perhaps a dedicated “ junior sim   section “may have been useful!
 

@jon b, many thanks for such a good report. I have been to the show together with Pete Dowson a few times around 10-15 years ago and agree with you about the train and bus services. It was the late autumn show back then so the weather wasn’t so nice.

We even did it in one day and that was exhausting.

I suspect the reason it’s popular with hardware people is not needing to fly. Driving from mainland Europe is much simpler and cheaper.

Did you attend any presentations? Was Asobo / Microsoft there with any announcements?

I can recall my attempts to land an Airbus on a short hop from AMS to ROT that must have loosened the teeth of my passengers. Joysticks aren’t my thing! 🤣

Enjoy your working week. Off to anywhere interesting?

I remember you saying you’d gone there and back in a day, that would be tiring for sure.
Yes I attended most of the presentations which were good. I was particularly interested in hearing about the new 787 that’s be developed.

MS boss did a pre recorded presentation as he couldn’t be there, quite a few of his team were though.

I suppose it’s easy enough to sit at home and enjoy those online though.

What did you think of the Vector 787 presentation, Jon?

It was very good Chris, I think it’s going to be exactly what we’ve been waiting for.

I was also amazed to hear Nicki Repenning from Meridian GMT and previously of course Honeycomb talk about the Fulcrum yoke. They’d  obviously taken notice of the fulcrum at the upper echelons of controller production.

5 minutes ago, jon b said:

I was also amazed to hear Nicki Repenning from Meridian GMT and previously of course Honeycomb talk about the Fulcrum yoke. They’d  obviously taken notice of the fulcrum at the upper echelons of controller production.

That’s interesting. I’ve tagged Chris aka @tutmeisterwho will be very interested about this.

I’m sure you can watch Nicki’s Meridian presentation online, I’ll try and post a link. It’s just a brief mention, he’s talking about the fulcrum being the only yoke to have offered full scale pitch travel. 

The fulcrums mentioned about the 17:35 mark

Edited March 26Mar 26 by jon b

29 minutes ago, jon b said:

I’m sure you can watch Nicki’s Meridian presentation online, I’ll try and post a link. It’s just a brief mention, he’s talking about the fulcrum being the only yoke to have offered full scale pitch travel. 

Thanks Jon. I had a look at their website but black predominates making it difficult to see anything.