h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The Farnborough Air Show starts next week. I highly recommend it.

If you've not been before, then they pitch a large marquee in Farnborough, and inside there are hundreds of racks displaying labelled bottles containing different types of air. There are also breathing demonstrations and...

OK, not really. It's like any other air show, but with this particular one I can lie in the garden and watch the fly-pasts (or is that 'flies-past'?)

Anyway, one effect the event does have is to congest all the nearby roads for a week. The authorities try to manage this by putting up yellow AA road signs. One of them caught my eye this morning. It said something like:

"Switch off your Sat Nav and Follow the Signs!"

I love it! It's the first sign I've seen that's told people to read the sign.

Road signs are fighting back against new technology, with its inaccurate directions that a generation of technology-punch-drunk drivers now rely on to lead them anywhere.

So who will win this battle to direct us? The old technology or the new?

The mind boggles.

Were any of them in Polish?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/shropshire/6364241.stm

I'm an old stick-in-the-mud. I've never used a sat-nav yet.

The logical proliferation of this situation is for the sat nav companies to issue a new software download. This will detect rogue AA signs, e.g.

"Turn left in 100 metres"

"Ignore the yellow sign in 50 metres telling you to switch me off"


The AA will respond with further signs:

"Look, we really meant it when we told you to switch your sat nav off."

"Ignore what it's telling you - it's all technobabble propaganda."

"There's no substitute for real signs in the real world."

"After all the air show is real, isn't it - it's not electrons. Think about it"

I really can't understand why traffic information such as diversions isn't collected directly by Sat Navs.

It's because the satellites don't broadcast traffic information. All they provide is location information.

So if a sat nav wants to pick on traffic info, it will have to listen in to some sort of traffic information which will probably be different from country to country.

So many Polish people came to Ireland looking for work during the boom that Polish is Ireland's second language, after English and ahead of Irish. Putting signs up in English and Polish would make sense.

Well my one gets some traffic information by radio, claims to route you around jams. but it still suffers from only getting the message after you have passed the last turn off and are in the jam.

Gnomon. since your signs are already bilingual it might be possible to add Polish. After all, it's slightly less difficult to spell than Irish...

Considerably easier to spell, I'd say. I've heard that Irish has the most sounds written with the least number of letters of any European language.

I'd believe it. Though I always went nuts trying to spell Polish, too.

Consider Przewalski's horse. Or Zbigniew Brzezinski.

We don't have air shows here since one ended with a plane landing on a crowd of spectators.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramstein_air_show_disaster

Even before that, they were regarded with scepticism, what with it being the era of fuel shortages, environmental awareness, and the huge costs involved..

Oh, and our satnav shows roads up in red which, according to the traffic news, are jammed or have hold-ups, roadworks, etc. These traffic jams are never there, though. Other hold-ups which are real, are not shown on the map. They use the police system, I think, but unless they have helicopters hovering over all the motorways all of the time, this has no chance of being accurate.

I've never heard of there being an air show in Ireland.

On special days like Easter Sunday, the Irish Air Force flies over Dublin. Well, four planes anyway. They actually have about 20 aircraft of various sorts.

There's nothing worse than an airshow when it's cloudy. For some reason, they continue to do their displays but above the cloud line. We're treated to an amazing array of whooshing sounds.

I always prefer the slower, older planes as you can see them better. We had an air display in which a Canberra demonstrated how high it could fly, which meant we couldn’t see it.

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Our air shows used to have WWII planes in them. I always enjoyed climbing around inside B-17s and such.

Once, Elektra and I were at a small air show in Wisconsin. There was a terrific storm that destroyed sever aircraft. We spent a couple of hours helping cars get out of the mud - they were parked in a field.

But I did get to ride in a Ford Tri-Motor that day. Beofre the storm.

Southampton had an air show in 2000, in which it was envisaged lots of flying boats would land and take off from Southampton Water, in front of the crowds. Sadly in 1998, when arranging the airshow, a Catalina flying boat sank and the Mayor of Southampton and another man drowned. The Mayor died trying to get everyone else out as the plane went down, even though he couldn't swim.

See: A86879074 Sea Wings 2000 - A Unique Airshow

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There's a large annual airshow at nearby Ellington Field. It features many WWII planes that belong to the Commemorative Air Force (formerly the Confederate Air Force). http://www.commemorativeairforce.org/

We also have the Lone Star Flight Museum in Galveston. http://www.lsfm.org/

I've lived in this area for nearly my entire life and I've never gone to the air show nor the flight museum. But I do get to see the planes fly over head quite often. They send the bombers and a few old fighters out before the shows to advertise. It's always a bit of a thrill hearing those old engines flying overhead.

Here's what you'll see at Farnborough this week:

http://www.farnborough.com/Public/Content/Flying-Display-1/4_32/


It's more of a commercial show (that's what the military has become these days) It opened today, but to a political storm over Russia. Putin has withdrawn Russian delegates (although this article suggests we didn't invite them)

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jul/14/russia-withdraws-delegates-farnborough-air-show-ukraine


The show usually showcases the perennial battle between Airbus and Boeing to build the largest thing with wings. I believe they chopped a lot of trees down recently so that some obese crate could try and land at the show.