This is me rather a long time ago at an airshow at Leuchars.  Apart from this souvenir my abiding memory is of going around the airfield with my chum Graham collecting empty lemonade bottles and claiming the deposits on them.

Fast forward several decades to the 2018 airshow at the National Museum of Flight at East Fortune where I learnt that instead of just sitting on an aircraft wing kids of the age I was then have been building an aircraft.

OK it's not a sleek and powerful jet fighter, and is perhaps all the better for not being one, but a kit assembled by pupils at Kinross High under the aegis of Aero Space Kinross, an ambitious project to create an aviation and space flight visitor attraction there.


East Fortune airfield was packed with enthusiasts, so much so that I decided that rather than join the interminable queues to see inside Concorde and other aircraft I'd go back some other time when it has relapsed into just being the site of the National Museum of Flight.  So I wandered around the various exhibits and then watched impressive displays by the Red Arrows and other aeroplanes including some quite historic models.

I heard an interesting talk by Tracey Curtis Taylor whose mission in life is to recreate the pioneering flights of such female aviators as Amy Johnson and to inspire young women to enter the world of aviation.  She had an amusing anecdote about being told off by the Livingstone airport authorities for her cavalier behaviour flying around Victoria Falls.  She was told that while that sort of thing might be acceptable in the UK "here in Zambia we have health and safety".