Having been caught out twice, out of the four or five times I’ve attended the Cosford airshow, I made a conscious decision to get there early.

Arrived at the standard gate at about 7:30 FROM PLYMOUTH completely unhindered. There were plenty of police – the A41 had been widened into two lanes from J3/M54 to the right turn and one line from the turn to the M54 junction.

I left at about 5:30pm – just got in my car and drove out in less than 10-15 mins (from the disabled car park to the same RAF Cosford main gate exit).

It really is about experience. If you don’t arrive early enough, you will get sent round The Wrekin (or so it seems), and three years ago (I think) I got caught just as they blocked off of the J3 exit at 9am. It then took until 12:15pm or so to get from there to parking up. That was clearly unacceptable to me – and I let them know about it.

The next year I tried catching the train from Wolverhampton High Level (actually low level was closed donkey’s years ago). Big Big Big mistake – a lorry had damaged a bridge and all trains were cancelled. Eventually got there via taxi, before about 10:30 and had to return by taxi too.

So this year I drove again – much cheaper than the train (achieved 47mpg) – got there early and left at what I would call a reasonable time – saw the finale aerobatics team and left straight after, leaving the airfield within 15 minutes – traffic was free flowing once on the A41.

The BBMF put on a reasonable display by their extremely high standards – but the beautifully turned out Dakota was worked hard during the day – making several arrivals and departures – carrying the parachute team on at least one (possibly two) occasion(s). It would have been great to see the Dakota when it actually let the team out of the aircraft – but in the absence of a massive video screen – the only way most people would have seen that is if the weather had been clear enough.

More vintage Jets would have been my preference (but not my expectation) – but I’ll undoubtedly fulfill that desire this weekend coming at Kemble.

My advice is never approach the airfield from the M54 if you expect to get there after 9am. Other routes seem much better at being able to cope.

Some nice pictures there.

I was further along the display line than you – in front of the disabled carpark. Still woke up this morning with hands like hams and feet twice the size they usually are 🙁 (Oh, and I sunburned my fingers :rolleyes: )

The early part, as can be seen from your pics, was quite dull weatherwise, and visibility was an issue.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any attachments room left – so will have to host a few pictures myself, a little later.

A dirty contact?

I looked at My Webspace as an option but I get he impression that the one provided by my ISP is not that good.

Why? Who is your ISP?

Hosting, is hosting – unless you’re forced to go with an ISP that sees your webspace as an opportunity to place it’s adverts. But that is rare. Heck, I can even host pictures on my server here at home, and have them appear on any website I link too (it’s a bit more complex, but not impossible – especially if you have broadband of any description).

Windows XP is perfectly capable of allowing you to log into your own webspace, once it is setup – You can use Internet Exploder initially, then a folder will appear in My Network Places – works just like Windows Explorer, you can drag and drop files into the space (you’re prompted for your login name and password, just to keep it secure). Then you can link to the files using your webspace address.

PM me, if you’d like one to one help.

Great shots, Darren.

I can see what you mean about the second lot being a bit softer – I wouln’t mind betting there’s an option to adjust that – buried deep within one the menus.

If you have your own webspace (many ISPs provide it free of charge), you can store it there, then simply use the img tags alone.

I STRONGLY recommend you ensure the images are no more than 800 pixels wide, to keep them “forum friendly”.

It is also a good idea to try and shrink the file size as much as possible, but not too much as it will affect image quality.