Super Day at RAF Cosford - Weather Great

Smashing day at Cosford but I'll come to that later.

Firstly the Moon phases. It's good that Anon 1 has adopted the add-on for his home-page. Now Google has gone into the idea in a big way there are pages and pages of potential add-ons. Ranging from Buddhist quotes to the News Headlines from Al Jazeera. I haven't succeeded in reaching the end of the add-ons yet so I don't know what else that I might like is lurking there.

I didn't sleep well last night; perhaps too excited about the outing today but around 3am the moon hove into view through my bedroom window. Tripod up, longest zoom onto Nikon, and click, click, click till an image which pleased me appeared. The rest were promptly deleted - Ah the advantages of digital. Not as sharp as I would like but it gives the picture.

Today it is supposed to be 79% and still a 'waxing Gibbous'. Mine certainly fits the description but I'm not too sure about the percentage. I hope not to repeat the exercise tonight !

The Aviation Museum day was a great success. Tim knew the way there and navigated us unerringly to our destination which we reached without major hold-ups. We saw the Roy car and thought they had seen us but apparently not - even when we followed them into a pub car-park and out the other side, when they got lost. Like yesterday it was very misty when we set off but you could see a pale old sun up there just waiting to burn all the mist away.

The temperature reached around 15C and provided another glorious Spring Day. The Museum was very interesting and one hangar was devoted to a 'Cold War' exhibition. I had taken along a box of some of my photographs from my national-service in the RAF in Germany 1953/4 and didn't realise what I had got. Mosquitos and Hurricanes still flying etc., and it said much for the archival quality of my printing in those days because they have for the most part remained sharp and contrasty. Picture 2 shows some of our group having a look at one of the outdoor exhibits on the way into our first hangar.

If I have a criticism it is that the curator has tried to exhibit too much in the indoor spaces. It needs editing by at least a third to give the remaining exhibits a better chance of being seen properly and appreciated. At the moment it looks as if everything they've got has had to be crammed in somewhere. But a throughly enjoyable day. And at least in the company of fellow photographers people can rabbit on interminably about matters photographic without being boring. Well most of the time anyway !

The journey back involved slightly more hold-ups because there had been an accident earlier in the day on the slip road leading to the A50 and it was closed. We needed divert around Derby which is notorious for bottlenecks at peak periods and we hit one. Still didn't take us long to get home though. Tim and John were excellent company in the car and I had taken the precaution of adding them to my Car Insurance for the day as a hedge against me having leg/back problems and being uncomfortable about driving. In the event I hardly suffered at all until right at the end when anther 20 miles would have done for me. But judicious doses of DiHydrocodeine at strategic intervals did the trick. As usual. But knowing that a back-up driver was properly covered gave me peace of mind.

I'm going to stop there and sort myself out. The OAGs struck again when I returned home. I decided to make a pot of tea and having put 2 teabags in the pot, I boiled the water and poured it in. Only to find that while my back was turned the OAGs had removed the teabags, with the result that, when I came to pour myself a mugfull I found that I had brewed a pot full of clear water. They really are incorrigible !

Catch you all tomorrow. Sleep tight. John was 48 today and I did remember to ring him.