Category Archives: aircraft

A Long Way to Salute!

The Royal Jordanian Air Force brought a C-130 Hercules to RIAT in 2025. The aircraft had some special markings on it but the thing that caught my attention when reviewing the images was the crew member on the top of the fuselage. It is not uncommon to have someone open the top hatch to watch proceedings as the crew taxies in. In this case, he was saluting as they turned off the runway and continued to do so for almost all of the time they were taxiing in. He did wave to the crowd a couple of time but, otherwise, he saluted all the way past us. A good effort on his part.

Only Slightly Better Prepared for the A340 This Time

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You might look at this image and ask, “why make a post about it?” That is a fair question I suppose. The first thing is it is an A340 so that might be enough for me. However, it is more about my luck with getting these European A340s as they operate in Bournemouth. This time I was walking with a longer lens. Last time I had one overfly me, I only had a short lens and so it was a bit distant. This was an improvement. However, this time it was a bit rainy and overcast so not great conditions. The specs of raindrops are clearly visible in the image. That might ruin it for me but, for some reason, this time I feel like it adds something that reflects my frustration with trying to get good shots of these jets. Whatever way I try and justify it, it doesn’t really matter. I just like it.

Qinetiq’s Attendees

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Some of my previous RIAT visits have included a selection of aircraft from the Qinetiq fleet. In 2025 I only saw a pair of aircraft from them. One was a King Air while the other was an AW139. The King Air didn’t look too special other than the raspberry ripple paint job. The AW139, on the other hand, is a helicopter that I think looks really good at any time. The livery suits it well and the crew made a pretty sporty arrival. It was nice to see both of them. Maybe some more airframes would be good next time.

Old Warden Visitor Departures

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While Old Warden’s shows provide a great selection of vintage aircraft, they are also available for visitors to fly in. As the show was wrapping up the afternoon session and waiting for the evening flying to commence, this was the opportunity for many of the light aircraft to head for home. They might not be as glamorous as some of the performers, but they were interesting in their own right and the conditions were great.

The converted Beech 18 was certainly something unusual, but a Grob motor glider is not something you see every day. However, the one I liked the most was possibly the most common airframe. A Piper PA-28 headed out. This is a type I used to fly many years ago. This one, though, was painted in British Caledonian colours and that really appealed to me having grown up with them flying out of Gatwick.

Qatar’s Apaches Look Better Than Everyone Else’s

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The Apache is a mean looking helicopter with plenty of angles and bumps to make it an interesting photo subject. However, the one shortcoming is that it is usually painted a dark green colour and that really sucks in the light. Getting a great shot of it is surprisingly difficult. Qatar, on the other hand, has done a nice job of coming up with a desert camouflage scheme for their Apaches. It really stands out against the usual dark schemes. It looked great in the sun when it arrived at RIAT. On an overcast day, even it struggled in the static display, though.

Not Sure the Laminar Flow is Surviving

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If you look at the most recent Boeing aircraft, they have adopted a far deeper inlet lip design. I don’t know whether it is connected but they have been doing work on having laminar flow around the engine cowlings. When the 787 first came along, airlines were not allowed to have them painted anything other than white. That has since been relaxed but there was a performance benefit to the design that was needed to meet promised goals. Consequently, I imagine that this area is quite sensitive to disturbance. That makes this Qantas 787-9 stand out to me. There was a load of patching on the inlet when I saw it taking off from Heathrow heading to Perth. That is a very long flight and tests the performance of the Dreamliner in its nominal configuration. I guess the impact can’t be that bad.

AN-74 High Lift System

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I shared some images of the Egyptian Air Force AN-74 that came to RIAT in 2025 in a previous post. I took a ton of shots during RIAT and have been pretty busy throughout the rest of 2025 so took forever to get through some of the images to cull them down. When looking through some of the shots at the end of 2025, I was quite taken by the high lift system on the AN-74. Previously I focused on the span of the wing but here are some shots that show the flap system and the surfaces across which the engine efflux passes to generate additional lift. It is quite a feat of engineering.

Reworking an Old Shot with Modern Denoise

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Periodically, when thinking about the latest processing tools that I have available, it takes me back to some older shots that would be interesting to rework. This shot of one of the Blue Angels jets was taken at NAS Oceana during one of their air shows. I was shooting with the 1D Mk IIN and at ISO 800. At the time, this was a really high ISO and resulted in a lot of noise in the images. (As an aside, I did find that printing did not show the noise at anything like the level that was apparent on screen.) Even without the denoise function, the latest raw convertor makes a decent job of the file but I figured I would use the denoise too. I think the file comes out really cleanly as a result. It also helps that, as an 8MP file, the processing is a lot quicker!

Metrea’s Appearance

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When I was still in Seattle, we would get periodic appearances from Metrea and their KC-135s. They would provide tanker support to the US Navy. That they operated from Boeing Field rather than going to a Navy base was always welcome. I didn’t know much about Metrea other than that they provided tanking services. However, they showed up at RIAT with a couple of their other types.

They brought a pair of turboprops. The King Air was in a low-key grey paint scheme and didn’t have many conspicuous external additions. There were some antennae that suggested extra comms capabilities and some ventral fins that imply something else might get added that reduces directional stability.

The Dash 8 had a bit more of a colourful paint job. A grey base livery but some red and yellow stripes brightened things up a bit. It similarly didn’t have anything too conspicuous added while it was flying but, when it was on static display, there was a turret under the front fuselage. There was another Dash 8 which did have some sensors which will get a post at some point.

Well, They Didn’t Survive

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I wasn’t terribly shocked when I recently heard that New Pacific ceased trading. The model seemed a bit suspect when it was first announced and they rapidly transitioned to charter work and away from schedule flying. I still liked seeing their 757s when they showed up in Seattle but I never thought they would survive long. Sadly, that proved to be the case. Here are some other shots of their operations which we won’t see again.