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SL721 Unveiling Ceremony at the CAM

Posted by Mike Henniger on Tue Aug 05, 2003 09:14:29 AM

I went to the presentation ceremony at the CAM. I give it a rating of satisfactory, but if you missed it "don't eat your heart out" as it could have been much better planned. If you missed the event you will be able to see SL721 at the Ottawa Flight Fest on August 23 and 24.

So here is how it went...

Showed up at 12:30 and payed my admission. The guy at the counter informed me the event was by invitation only and that I might get to see the ceremony if I stand around. Nice... not! Here I am paying my admission and it still wasn't clear if this is a public event. Nice. (that is sarcasm by the way) I didn't expect to take a seat from an attending veteran, but also I didn't expect the event to be so anti-general public.

SL721 went on static display around 12:50. It was parked on the east side of the museum. If you are familiar with the museum there is a fenced area outside that you can get to from the museum where you can view the aircraft parked outside. SL721 was parked on the other side of the fence with the port side to the building. This was not bad as it allowed plenty of good picture taking, but not the ability to walk around.

There was a ceremony at 2 PM. All the reserved seating was used. All the speakers (including Bob Swaddling and Michael Potter) gave excellant speaches I am sure, but the sound system was so poor that I couldn't hear a thing they said even though I managed to find a place to stand about about 5 metres from the stage. The speakers were set-up to project to the seated attendees, but not to the general public "standing around". I was occasionally able to make out the words "Spitfire" and "honour" but that was it.

After the ceremony was over we were all (the entire mass in attendance) asked to move outside to the north side of the building though one single door. Yeah..... that works. We eventually got out, but you can imagine how long it took.

Now once outside things improved. There is a nice long earth burm which the crowd was able to stand-up on to watch the flight. And if it hadn't taken so long to get outside, I might have been able to get into a position for photos. Instead there were about 3 rows of people between me and the rope barrier. Museum staff kept saying "Don't worry, the plane will be in the air. Everyone will be able to see it." Well... if you are a photographer looking for that great shot, you know this just isn't true. The position they set up for the crowd was excellant, and the small hill made it even better. It would just be better if the made the flight line longer, i.e. made better use of the property they have. It would actually be a nice place for a small airshow.

The flight itself was very nice. Mr. Potter did a very nice display, and even gave us a nice top side view with a banking turn. He did about 4 passes then brought it in for a landing. I was able to weasel my way to a good photo taking position and get some taxiing shots after landing.

The entire crowd then returned into the museum though the same single door (even though there are other doors along the same wall). I didn't stick around for the mingling afterwards as I just had to get away from that place.

All in all my experience was frustrating. I know these kinds of events are not the norm for the museum so they don't have much experience, so a few mistakes were bound to be made. I hope we see more similar events in the future as it should be obvious they CAN draw crowds, but they certainly need some better planning.

My film will be going in for processing today. Maybe by tomorrow I will have some pics posted.

Regards,

Mike

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