2025 Popham Events Hit New Heights
New for 2025 was our Careers Tent – working with a number of organisations including Metal Seagulls, Basingstoke College of Technology (BCoT) and the CAA, our aim was to highlight that aviation and aerospace career entry routes are vast - from technical courses studied at university, to apprenticeships, graduate programmes, and even military service.
Most people know about training to become a pilot or flight attendant as a career, but there are so many other job roles across the aviation and aerospace industries which are often overlooked - at this year's event, the purpose of our dedicated tent for careers was to allow anyone and everyone to get involved in understanding the diverse range of opportunities available and what's required to get started in the industry.
The Metal Seagulls team are huge advocates for getting young people into aviation and were a big driving force behind what we had on offer over the weekend – hands on activities included learning how to use a rivet gun and building a working propeller. BCoT and YES (Youth Education Support) were also on hand to offer advice and expertise for youngsters thinking about a career in aviation.
Outside of the Careers Tent, many familiar faces returned to exhibit both on the flightline and in our marquee, but we also had some new companies join us, including Wilco Radio and ALPA Simulation, whose first visit to the Popham Microlight Trade Fair was a success.
The speaker’s tent was also popular throughout the weekend, with talks from the Royal Institute of Navigation (RIN), LX Navigation, Airbourne Aviation, and PilotAware.
We even had a large number of doggos enjoying the show!
Model Show
Moved from the September date of previous years due to clashes with other shows, this year’s Model Show was held the weekend after the Microlight Trade Fair. The date change proved popular as we had over 25 traders attend for 2025 – a 550% increase on 2024!
This in turned pulled in our highest ever number of pilots – with the final number coming in at just over 70. Kudos to the British Model Flying Association (Southern Area) especially Dave Franks and Pete Bennett who had the mammoth task of fitting everyone into the super tight schedule.
The standard of flying was, as always, world class, with the pilots delivering varied and exciting displays over both days, including awesome RC combat, turbine jet power, super skilful heli pickups and clever formation flying. Model highlights included Jon Horne’s 1/3 scale Yak 52, Joe Lofthouse’s Red Arrows 1:3.75 scale CARF Bae Hawk, Steve Carr’s 55% scale Yak 54 and Adam Broomhead’s 50% scale Bucker Jungmeister.
Exhibitors were also strong in numbers, as we invited back crowd favourites Clipping Point RC Drift Club, Portsmouth & District Model Power Boat Club, the Whoopy drones, Basingstoke Model Boat Club and Steve Harper’s Airport Aerodrome & Airfield Special Interest Group. Newcomers included Portsmouth Model Boat Display Team with their highly detailed model boats, ships, and tanks, and Solent Aviation Art Society who displayed their own artwork and ran a competition for budding young artists.
Overall, we saw over 2,300 visitors across the weekend and had lots of positive feedback from families, RC enthusiasts, pilots, traders and exhibitors.
Same again next year - see you there!
