Day 3 - Tuesday 30th July

Established patterns . . .

So the pattern continued for another day . . . I was up and about very early doing this and that I met up with some other new people in the breakfast room.  The buses to the air show were quite frequent and I was on one at about 7:00am.

Metalwork 101 . . .

Once in the show grounds I meandered my way to the workshop pavilions again and headed for the metal work area.  I managed to get a seat down the front so I could see what was going on.  The guy giving the lecture was a bit past it but he managed to give a reasonable understanding about what do.

Luckily the bloke who I was teamed up with knew all about riveting and he was happy for me to do the work will he instructed me.  He left about half way through and another guy stepped in to help - he is actually building a plane.  The process installing solid rivets is quite easy - but doing it without marking the metal and getting the right dimpling is quite hard.  In fact I spent the next week looking very closely at many home made metal aircraft and frankly not many are done that well . . . but it is too easy to be critical!

Homebulding line, again . . .

Next I took another quick look down the homebuilding 'line' . . . I plan to come back though this in much greater detail later - and then back my special hospitality area for another lovely lunch!





Composite workshop, sort of . . .

After lunch I attended the lecture for the composite workshop . . . but the bloke doing it was all over the place and I wasn't the only one to walk out - I will come back when someone else is talking.

Air show and Warbirds . . .

I decided to do a combination walk around and watch the air show - I figured that it was going to be much of the same stuff over all week, and I was right.  This time I headed north down the home builders line looking at aircraft and watching the air show intermittently.  Eventually I took up a position right down near the warbird section as many of them were firing up to participate in the show.  It was quite interesting watching them coming and going.

More hospitality . . . 

Eventually I made my way back to the main area of the airshow to orient myself as to where some of the specialist avionics manufacturers were before going back to the university.  Well, I certainly found one.  Bendix King were having a 'street party' and I obviously walked over to see what was going on.  Using the same process as yesterday I talked my way in . . . and had a lovely meal, a few beers and met some really interesting people.

And then there was another problem to solve . . . I arrived back at the 'bus park' at about 10:20pm to find the last bus departed for the university to 10:00pm.  There was a bunch of Canadians, a few Aussies and a couple of Americans standing around wondering what to do - so I walked across the road and 'hired' a local school bus to take us into town for $3.00 each.  So that solved that problem.