Smoke On!

No, not the cigarette sort of smoke. The sort that's trailed out of a canister strapped to the tail of a light aircraft flying at about 200mph, 20 metres above the River Thames.

I went to the Qualifying Day for the Red Bull Air Race, London leg today (well, Saturday), and "smoke on" is the instruction given to pilots to switch on the smoke trail at the start of their run.

It was a fab day - the planes were shockingly fast, and it's hard to describe just how amazing some of the flying was. I didn't get any photos, but there was a random guy there who had a camera with a zoom lens bigger than my forearm, so I asked him if he'd mind emailing me his flickr url once he's uploaded some pictures.

In the mean time, here's some from another flickr account I found from last year's London race. Last week's Rotterdam leg will also be on the Channel 4 Catch Up site for another 4 days (there's a bit at 03:30 that shows how fast it all is)...

http://www.channel4.com/video/brandless-catchup.jsp?vodBrand=red-bull-air-race-2008