One of the advantages of being there vey early on the first day was that there were no queues, plus I had the luxury of spending some time talking to the soldiers. They told me that this C-17, named the Spirit of Berlin, is stationed in South Carolina, which is a long long way from Berlin.
When I was a kid I went to an open day door at Air Base Torrejón, close to Madrid. I can still remember how huge a similar aircraft looks like when entering through the rear ramp for a child. At the time, I think it was a C-5 Galaxy.
When I first moved to Germany, the plan was that I would work on the TP400 project (the turboprop engine designed by a joint venture of european companies powering the A400M). As life has many turns, I ended up doing relatively little on this engine, but even so it was quite special to have a look inside and even sit in the cockpit for a little while. I also spent some time talking to one of the French pilots, which made for an even better experience. Merci beaucoup!
I was yesterday a few hours at ILA and I really enjoyed the time. I arrived very early and managed to see most of what I wanted to see before it got too crowded, i.e. no queues!
This is one of our engines, a BR710, proudly powering a beatiful Bombardier Global 5000.
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