Farnborough Airshow here we come...

Having just recovered from a hectic Autosport Show, my meeting today with the organiser of the International Youth Day for Farnborough International Airshow means we're already starting to plan our the next big event. On Friday 21st July we'll be there with our A380 flight simulator, and hopefully be launching our Future Flight Greener by Design competition for 2006. The judging for the 2005 competition is nearly finished, and the lucky winners will be hearing from us really soon. So stay tuned folks. If you want to see what all the fuss is about then check out www.futureflight.org

RTA with Alonso - almost...

Phew, what a busy few days! Now it's all over for another year and ready to pack up and go home. Autosport 2006 was even bigger and better than last year, and we certainly had a lot of fun. Thanks to the folks from Sandbach School for helping out and letting us show off their car. They're strong contenders for the Aerodyanmics Innovation Prize, that's for sure! A mad scrum behind the NEC. I nearly ran over Fernando Alonso's Renault F1 car on the way out. After loading the van at around 8pm I was all ready for the drive home. Past the scrum of vans and car transporters, around the corner and booph, almost into the R25. It was just parked on the side of the road! Anyway, it's been a long but exciting few days, so I'm glad to be heading back to the relative quiet on campus.

Autosport Alumni Fest

We've had a busy couple of days at the Autosport International Show. It's been great to have some many Southampton alumni coming to say 'Hi' to us on the stand. Graduates from the 1970s up to this year have been chatting to us about what they've been up to since leaving SO17. Southampton has long been associated with motorsport, from Adrian Newey on £millions per year (graduated 1980, 3rd year project in the wind tunnel photo shown here) to several of our graduates from 2005 who are starting out in Formula One! It was great to see everyone, and any other engineering alumni please get in touch via the website... http://www.soton.ac.uk/EngineeringSciences/Alumni/ More tomorrow on the wrap-up from the show!

And we're off..

The show is open and hoards of visitors are gazing in wonder at the spread of glorious automotive hardware on show. The University of Southampton stand is all up and running, with the fantastic students from Sandbach School telling people about their Greenpower cars. We announced our new 'Aerodynamics innovation Award' today, quite a bit of interest was generated. It will go to the Greenpower car with the most interesting and effective aerodynamics of the 2006 season. Don't know what Greenpower is? Check out www.greenpower.co.uk.

Autosport comes to Birmingham

Wow, after a long drive and some setting up we're finally here and ready on the starting grid. Autosport International at NEC Birmingham is a truly spectacular occasion. More to come as we wander around the show.

It begins....

Well, here is the new blog... Wonder where it will go?