Asian Aerospace 04(rant)

[PainRack]

I went to the Asian Aerospace 2004 today, and other than some spectular screwups that prevented me from watching nothing other than the Rafale and India fixed wing squadron for the airshow and the DA constant changing of timing, I rather enjoyed myself.


This is what I liberated from the show.

4 Typhoon posters/cards
2 Rafale cards
1 F-15 "Flight Demonstration DVD"
1 Rafale.... something.
1 DHL card

Unfortunately, I failed to get into the Typhoon simulator and I definitely failed to acquire the "Rafale" clothing apparel. They were distributing lots and lots of free stuff, and this brings me to why I am posting this online.


Compared to the various other boothes, DHL, Olympus(digital cameras) and Rafale certainly aroused the most interest.
For one, they were the ones giving away the most free stuff. Dessault went over the top IMO, they had a shirt, bag, cap, some kinda cushion thingy in addition to the standard brochures and displays of videos. I couldn't find the VCD EADS gave out at the RSAF openhouse 2004 for the Typhoon at EADS booth, so, that was a dissapointment, but they still gave lots of cool stuff like posters and cards. This compared to the Lockheed, which only gave out the DVD. Okay, sure, it was the most expensive of the lot but still.........


For second, all 3 fighter companies seemed to realise the value of sex appeal. The F-15 booth had 2 ladies dressed in black, the Typhoon booth had 2 ladies dressed in red, but neither of them could beat the Dessault booth, which had 3 ladies dressed in extremely tight clothing(think Japanese racequeens without the exposure). And one of them was easily the prettiest of the lot, being some Eurasian gal. But none of them beat DHL, which seemed to have hired a whole model agency worth of gals to promote their stuff, including mobile promoters. And a very pretty gal dressed in a cheongsam at their booth.


3rd- The promotion efforts was also quite interesting. Dessault relied on sex appeal and mass appeal, EADS relied on engineers, fancy videos and brochures and so on to demonstrate their value whereas the US dispatched the CO of 497th CTS down to talk about the F-16 and F-15. Ooooh, man, I would had hated to be that man. Standing out there in the hot sun for hours after hours. As a sidenote, most of the DHL gals were quite badly sunburned. Interesting to watch their tan lines, but this demonstrated the sorching heat.


4th- Who decided on the dress code anyway? Someone apparently decided that all the female booth promoters had to look professional, while the males were all dressed in BLACK overcoats. This was the only day in my life where I did not pity females for the seasonal influences of fashion, as they were all more comfortable than the males. Although the police did argue with this female visitor who was wearing sandals.Apparently, she was violating some dress code. Shrug.

[Zoink]

That's a pretty good haul. At my last Helicopter Expo I liberated a superball that flashed when you bounced it Oh ya, the show was OK too.

[Sea Skimmer]

Given its current record, sex is about all Rafale can hope to sell on, though I'm sure Dassault already has plenty of prostitutes on retainer.

[PainRack]

That's a pretty good haul. At my last Helicopter Expo I liberated a superball that flashed when you bounced it Oh ya, the show was OK too.

I got this strange dart too, that apparently uses glue to sticky on.

[PainRack]

Given its current record, sex is about all Rafale can hope to sell on, though I'm sure Dassault already has plenty of prostitutes on retainer.

Sex sells.

But then again, the maneveurs they had the Rafale go through looked extremely impressive.