~JcZw

In memory of the young, innocent days when my father would bring me to the Asian Aerospace show

Let me tell you a secret...

I've actually

wantonly

deliberately

pon-ned school before. Or rather, missed half a day

Well, actually, that was when I was in K2.. heheh... the reason? To go with my father to watch the Thunderbirds aerobatic team over ECP... Come to think of it, it should have been within cycling distance of VJC then.... Oh, to have been in VJ in 1992 or 1993 or whatever year it was... that would have been fun.

Oh, for the record, besides sickness, thats the only time which I missed school.

The Thunderbirds, incidentally, are a US aerobatic team, that is, acrobatic with aircraft... Oh yea, there are many other teams, like

The Blue Angels (US navy based), which sadly, I've never watched, with the F/A 18 Hornet

The Red Arrows (Royal Air Force), which I've watched, during one of the Valentine's Days when I was still a kid with asthma, using the Hawk

But it was the image of the Thunderbirds which captured my imagination... Mainly cos the F16 Fighting Falcon was (and still is) my favourite fighter.

Thats right, for many a year last time, like many kids, I fantasized about being a pilot. My eyesight shooting past 500 deg before I had reached secondary school put paid to that though...

But it was a good fantasy while it lasted... and I have a hundred (or had, maybe) metal aircraft of various nationalities, as well as models, (first 1:144 scale ones, before proceeding to the larger 1:72 scale) to prove it. I collected models, comics on planes... I read about them, through many yellow-paged and dusty books my father (also an aircraft lover, his favourite being the F4 Phantom) had salvaged, and there were shows to watch too.... I watched and rewatched Iron Eagle (although now I realise its quite unrealistic), Top Gun, 633 Squadron and The Battle of Britain (The imagine of the Heinkel gunner getting his eye shot out was hard to forget for a little kid) over and over again.

And of course, there was the Asian Aerospace Show.

Of course, I jumped at the chance to go to see planes, and the warnings of having to bake on the tarmac of the runway for untold hours could not persuade me not to. The fact that at that time I'd never heard of the words "CCA", "tuitorial", fencing" or "OSSIS outing" added to the fact that I had time to go and swan about at Paya Lebar Airbase (if I remember correctly).

The memories of what we did there were hazy... But some do stand out..

Like the lurid red covers which covered the afterburners (which my father said were so that little children wouldn't get sucked in and spat out). The arming pins of the missiles and bombs were also marked with red tape... I remember asking if they could really go off...

Without fail, we would catch the arming of an aircraft.. somehow I could always get a place at the front of the crowd, so I could catch the men screwing the Sidewinders onto the pylons of a F5 Tiger, or filling the cannon magazine with 20mm shells.

Then there was the queuing up for a chance to sit in the cockpit of a fighter... The lines to the Tigers and Skyhawks were always relatively short, but the fighter I wanted to get close to would be the F16 (the "D" version at that time), where the queue stretched for meters... But the wait would always be worth it... Thanks to my father for waiting also... haha... And there were always helicopters like the Super Puma and Ecureil...

Once there was a weapons display there, where we got to twiddle with (unloaded) grenade launchers, rifles and pistols... I only could remember I could hardly lift a pistol with 2 hands... but then again, you're talking about the me-who-had-not-gone-through-puberty-or-st-john yet.

Sometimes there were exotic aircraft there too like the Mirage (complete with the infamous Exocet missile), the Rafale, and even a Tornado!

The last thing that I recall was once watching a parachute display by a bunch of paras, as well as a scramble exercise by a section of F-16s, where they displayed take-offs two by two, as well as ground-hugging flybys at speeds past Mach 1 (which, I'm sure, impaired my hearing)...

Oh well... such are the memories of those days... where we would invariably come back with all sorts of airforce related paraphenelia, as well as serious sunburn....

Haha yea I know, that was long and most people may not understand it, but I had a great urge to write it... heheh...

The Thunderbirds are fantastic!

Oh yea, all the best for SPA, Year 2s...

Disclaimer: Photos taken from here: (Thunderbirds BlueAngels RedArrows)