Tag Archives: airplane

Festival of Flight Other Stuff

There have been a few posts of specific aircraft from the Shuttleworth’s Festival of Flight this summer. While those planes were of specific interest to me, there was an extensive display with many other types of planes taking part. Some of these were familiar types but some were new to me. This included variants of the de Havilland Moth family and an old Sopwith. I have run through the many shots I took that day and here is a selection of images of the displays although by no means a comprehensive one!

Wimbledon Special Emirates Climbing Out of Manchester

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We were walking through the grounds of Tatton Park on a recent visit and I was carrying a long lens with me to be ready for the deer that roam the park. However, that was also handy given that the airliners climbing out of Manchester Airport came near us. The conditions were not good for plane photography to be honest. The clouds were often low enough that we never saw the planes but, at one point, I did get a good view of an Emirates A380 climbing overhead and turning in our direction. It had the new Emirates livery combined with special markings for Wimbledon’s tournament earlier this year. A bit of processing was necessary to get it to a reasonable shape.

Glasgow Airport Brings Some Variety (At Least for Me)

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I have had to make a few trips to Glasgow recently and, while some of them involved the train up, I did also fly on occasion. This meant I had some time at Glasgow Airport waiting for my flight home. British Airways and EasyJet are regular features at Glasgow so nothing new about them. However, you get some visitors from Europe and Loganair has a number of turboprops based there so this was a nice chance to see something different to the norm (although I get plenty of ATRs passing the house).

What’s on This Azerbaijan 777’s Fuselage?

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We had an excellent time walking through Windsor Great Park and, while I wasn’t there chasing aircraft, there were a few opportunities to get images of some of the arrivals into Heathrow in the distance. One of these was an Azerbaijan Boeing 777. I grabbed a couple of shots of it as it came over Windsor in the distance and then thought nothing further about it. However, when I started to look through my shots, I noticed some interesting lumps and bumps on the fuselage. My thoughts were immediately that they were some form of defensive countermeasures but if anyone has any other thoughts, I’d be interested to hear them.

VC-10 Time

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Our visit to the Brooklands Museum meant were were at the home of the Vickers VC-10. The museum has a complete example along with another fuselage and some test items related to the development of the aircraft that was undertaken here. The complete airframe belonged to the Sultan of Oman and it was flown into Weybridge in the late 80s before the runway was rendered unavailable. It was quite a luxurious configuration in its day but does have a rather basic look compared to what might be available today.

Throwing a Transport Around the Sky

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I have seen plenty of footage of C-27J displays where the crews make use of the plentiful power of the type to undertake aerobatics. However, I had never seen it in person. The only C-27Js I had seen display were from the US Coast Guard and they were much more benign in their performance. RIAT brought an example from the Italian Air Force’s test centre and the crew that displayed it knew exactly how much performance they could wring from it.

They displayed a few times during the show, and each performance was worth stopping to watch. The ability to loop and roll a decent sized transport was impressive. The conditions during some of the displays were not ideal from a lighting point of view but the humidity in the air did make for some great prop vortices. An inverted plane streaming vapour from the props makes for an interesting image. If you haven’t had the chance to see the display and an opportunity presents itself, do be there.

On the Voyager Line

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My Voyager ride with 101 Sqn ended back at Brize Norton and we pulled into the line with some other Voyagers. This included Vespina, the jet that is painted in national markings rather than the usual grey. We hung out on the ramp to get a group photo before heading back to the terminal. I got some shots of the Voyagers on the line while I was there (including the jet that we had just been in).

Sensors Versus Markings on the Gripen E

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I was editing my images from RIAT recently and culling those that were never going to see the light of day. As I was working through the images of the Gripen E demonstrations, I noticed an array of sensors on the fuselage of the aircraft. There were also a bunch of markings that looked quite similar. The sensors seemed to have a specific shaping to the fuselage to align them with where they needed to face whilst the markings just seemed painted on to both the fuselage and the pylons. My assumption was that these were tracking locations for stores separation tests, but they were different to what I have seen used for this previously. I can’t tell for sure whether one is designed to distract you from the other! I have no knowledge of the systems fitted to the Gripen and will have to do some research but once you see this array of sensors, you can’t help but notice them thereafter!

The Approach Is Busy

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Back to a time earlier this year when I made a trip to Heathrow for a brief bit of shooting. Most of the time, I was offset from the approach path to get shots of the jet as they were on short final approach. However, I did walk along to the approach lights to get some head on shots. While there were more about getting a tight angle on the jets and some underside shots, it did also allow me to look back up the approach and see a number of jets on the glideslope or turning to line up. Heathrow is a busy place so there always seem to be jets on approach.

Black Jets Look Better

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A brief encounter with an Embraer Praetor one weekend at Paine Field for today’s post. I like the Praetor/Legacy jets but one sitting at the threshold might not normally be worth a look. However, this one was painted black and I have a weakness for black painted bizjets. That’s it!