We look to the skies this week. Is it a bird, is it a plane, or is it a flying monk?
The Bristol International Balloon Fiesta is held annually in a park on the outskirts of Bristol. Teams from the UK and other parts of the world bring their hot air balloons to the site and participate in mass ascents where as many as 100 balloons may launch at a time.
The invention of the jet engine revolutionised aviation. It began in Britain under military sponsorship in the 1930s and ’40s, all building on the original imaginative work by Royal Air Force airman Frank Whittle. Though it hardly featured in the Second World War, thereafter the technology began to become the key element of both civilian and military aviation.
The "V bombers" were the Royal Air Force trio of aircraft types that, during the 1950s and 1960s, provided the United Kingdom's strategic 'nuclear deterrent' strike force, known officially as the V force or Bomber Command Main Force.
Founded in 1910, Shoreham Airport, near Brighton, is the oldest airport in the UK and the oldest purpose-built commercial airport in the world still in operation.
The Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements (FAAM), based at the Cranfield University campus alongside Cranfield Airport in Bedfordshire, conducts pioneering research about weather activities and air conditions with a specially equipped aircraft.
Eilmer of Malmesbury was a Benedictine monk in pre-Norman England best known for his early attempt at a gliding flight using wings.
