Tag Archives: airplane

Qinetiq’s Attendees

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.

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.

Bizjets At RIAT

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The number of operators attending RIAT attracts a lot of corporate attention. Consequently, there are a few bizjets that show up at Fairford too. Most of these are civilian operated but I may have been a little lax and included a military operated bizjet just because I can. Here is a selection of the corporate types that showed up during the several days of RIAT.

RAF’s First Wedgetail

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The provision of airborne early warning seems to be a topic that is vexing countries currently. The RAF retired its E-3 fleet without a replacement. They then ordered five Wedgetails only to later reduce the order to three. Now there is discussion of increasing it again. Meanwhile the US decided to similarly replace the E-3 fleet with Wedgetails and ordered two.

A change of administration brought a plan to scrap that idea, use satellite surveillance and buy some more Hawkeyes in the interim. Congress is pushing back on that. Meanwhile, NATO had planned to go down the Wedgetail route but is now looking elsewhere given the lack of commitment from the US to the platform. SAAB’s GlobalEye has since picked up more orders including one from France and NATO might follow that route. All a bit of a mess.

Anyway, all of that is a long prelude to the fact that the first of the RAF’s Wedgetail fleet made an appearance at RIAT in 2025. It was supposed to appear on one day but apparently scrubbed. Consequently, it was rearranged to come in the following day. I imagine the RAF didn’t want the embarrassment of it failing to appear. It made a run in with the Red Arrows providing formation support. Then it made solo passes and an approach for a touch and go.

I don’t know how far off service entry it is, but testing continues at Boscombe Down. I have seen its distinctive outline on the airfield when driving along the A303. Hopefully they will be active before too long and also that, this time, the funding is provided to keep the systems current unlike the issues that led to the E-3 fleet fading away.

Another A350 Operator for Me

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Regular visitors to the blog will know I find the A350 to be the best-looking airliner in production at the moment. During a visit to Heathrow, I got my first look at one of the more recent operators. Air India started taking delivery of jets last year. They have done the decent thing and put a colourful livery on their planes as opposed to the usual mostly white. I am grateful for this as well as for the good light I had when it came in.