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I went down to London on Sunday to watch the British leg of the Red Bull Air Race. Was well worth it, fantastic flying displays from some of the top aerobatics pilots in the world. I only had a little compact camera with me, but managed to get a few photos:

Knife-edge through the gate. Those inflatable pylons are about 20 metres high, and the pilot’s head has to pass below the top of it to count.

Through the last of the chicane

Kirby Chambliss, the eventual winner, turning round at the far end of the track, with a lot of G-force!

I only realised the other day that the next leg is in Budapest on the 19th and 20th August. Annoyingly, I’m going to be in Budapest from the 13th to the 18th, and if I’d known sooner I could have stayed an extra couple of days. Will hopefully spot them practicing though.

Also in London, I went to the Spar shop just off Oxford Street, where they sell Tim Hortons coffee and doughnuts, the first I’ve had in over a year. I became a big fan when I lived in Canada, and usually went a few times a week. It’s pretty much a part of Canadian culture, but there’s hardly anywhere you can get it outside of North America, and that’s one of the few places in the UK. Standing there with coffee in one hand and a Boston Cream doughnut in the other actually made me feel quite emotional. Sad, I know…

Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites have just unveiled WhiteKnightTwo, the mothership that will launch SpaceShipTwo, the first commercial sub-orbital tourism spacecraft. It looks pretty cool:

Current price for a flight is expected to be $200,000, although that’ll come down in time. Like Richard Branson pointed out, all new forms of transport start off fairly expensive. Early passenger air travel was out of reach to all but the very wealthy, and likewise cruise ships. I can imagine this being really popular amongst those rich enough to afford it, and that’ll eventually bring the price down for the rest of us. I’d better start saving now.

More information on the Virgin Galactic website.

On the news sites today, the restored Vulcan Bomber XH558 has flown again for the first time. It’s a beautiful aircraft, I look forward to seeing it at an airshow soon. Here’s a quick slideshow/video I knocked up from a webcam that was watching it down there:

So on Saturday I got the bus down to Hamilton, to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum. I chose Saturday because their Avro Lancaster was due to be flying. And it was:

It’s a beautiful aircraft. There are only two in the world left flying, this one and the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight one based in England. I’ve seen that several times at airshows (and on one memorable occasion, when I was sat in my room at my parents’ house I heard an aeroplane approaching and looked out of the window just in time to see the Lancaster flying over). You can actually fly in the Canadian one, if you take out the highest level of membership with the museum for $2000 a year. Or get a flight in a biplane for a membership of about $300. If I was rich…

Canada Day yesterday, went out with some guys from the hostel to watch the fireworks and then had a few drinks afterwards. Possibly a few too many, but I’m fine now.

Only about 4 days left here, then back to England.