Tag Archives: fighter

Super Bugs at Bremerton

One of the last air shows I attended before we left the Pacific Northwest was at Bremerton. The unusual thing about this air show was that I didn’t head there alone. Instead, Nancy came along with me. It is a long time since she last came to a show with me, but the good news was that she enjoyed it! One of the parts of the show that she found the best was the US Navy’s Super Hornet display. They ripped up the sky for a while. Their blast across the field from crowd rear particularly amused her!

The conditions not ideal from a lighting point of view but there was humidity in the air with the upside that the jet was created plenty of spluff. One of the passes in particular created a lot of cloud activity. It made for a difficult image to process given the contrast with the cloudy background and that its own clouds needed not to be over exposed. I suspect I shall probably try reprocessing this again in the future as either my techniques improve, or the software gets more advanced. I did have a bit too much lens for the closest part of the pass – oh well…

The History of Harriers in One Place

Leave a Reply

The Brooklands Museum might be located in the home of Vickers and include a lot of Vickers exhibits, but it also has some Hawker products too. I might be slightly exaggerating about the full history of Harriers, but they have three different examples of the Harrier lineage on display. The first is actually a Harrier but a P1127. The original demonstrator that led to the Kestrel and ultimately the Harrier. The design philosophy is clearly the same, but this was the beginning of the journey for the Kingston design team.

Then there is a Harrier GR1. Unusually it is fitted with the extended wingtips which provided a little extra fuel and a slight reduction in drag. The reason the plane is fitted with them is that it is one of the airframes that took place in the Transatlantic Air Race and won. It is surrounded by some displays of the race and the competitors it defeated – most importantly the Royal Navy!

Last but by no means least is a two-seater, G-VTOL/ZA250. This was a company funded demonstrator and was a regular sight at air shows throughout the 80s. It undertook sales campaigns with various countries and undertook trials of things like the ski jump take off and the Skyhook concept. It seemed to be in a different paint scheme every time I ever saw it on TV. Sure, no Sea Harrier or Harrier II but this is quite a collection to have in one place.

Tanking Typhoons

Leave a Reply

I had the good fortune to be able to spend a day with 101 Sqn of the Royal Air Force when they were undertaking training missions in one of their primary roles of aerial refuelling. Based at RAF Brize Norton, the squadron operates the Airbus Voyager, the A330MRTT aircraft. The aircraft we were in was configured for two-point refuelling while some of the aircraft have a three-point config that allows tanking of heavy aircraft from the higher capacity centreline hose drum unit.

We took off from Brize and headed out over the North Sea. Our initial tracks were off the coast of East Anglia which made for a convenient place to pick up trade from the RAF bases there. The F-35s were deployed from Marham so there was less likelihood of one of those jets showing up, but we did expect Typhoons. It was too long after we were on station before the first customers showed up.

The jets appeared from the port side of the jet and picking them up early allowed you to see them sweeping in astern of the plane before they approached from astern. They would gather off the port wing extending the refuelling probe before being cleared into pre-contact positions on either wing. Then they would pull forward to make contact and take on fuel. Once they were done, they would gather off the starboard wing until the flight had all taken on fuel at which point they would accelerate away to continue with their flight. This departure might just be peeling away but it sometimes included a burst of power and a climb up away from our flight level with the noise even being noticeable inside our insulated cabin.

There are very limited options when it comes to photographing the jets while they are plugged in. The pods are mounted outboard on the wings – I think in the location where the outboard engines would be on an A340 – but the length of the hose means that the drogue is quite a long way aft. This means that only the last few rows of the aircraft – it has a pretty standard seating config throughout most of the fuselage – actually have the ability to see the jets. I had been advised by a friend that the viewing was limited.

I had brought two cameras on the flight. My main camera was fitted with the 100-400 lens and my use for that was on aircraft off to either side. The other body I brought along was an older one I use less frequently these days and that is the M6 with a 55-200 lens. This ended up getting a lot of use. However, neither of them was suitable for use when the jets were refuelling. The angles looking back are tight and the interior panelling around the window apertures limits how you can point backwards. In this case, the phone was by far the best option. The small lens diameter combined with the ability to get it close to the window meant it was the best bet. Even then, it was limited in what it could see.

Later in the mission we headed up towards Scotland to pick up some local trade although, ironically, we ended up with jets from Coningsby which would probably have been fine in our original tracks. Overall, the mission last over 6 hours and we had a variety of periods when we had customers and then periods of waiting. It was definitely an interesting day out and certainly worth seeing. My thanks to the team at Brize for hosting us so well.

The Gloomy Conditions Make the Cockpit Displays Visible

Leave a Reply

Back on one of my last visits to Coupeville to watch the Growlers undertaking FCLP, the weather was not playing ball and things ended up getting quite gloomy at the end of the slots they had planned. With a modern camera, this is not really an issue as you can handle some really low light without too much compromise. However, the thing I did notice as I was going through the images was that the green colours of the cockpit displays really start to show up. In some of the earlier shots, the light in the sky was reflecting off the canopy which washed it out a touch but by the last few passes, the green was really showing up.

More Super High Frame Rates for the Red’s Syncro Pair

Leave a Reply

A bit of a theme for me recently has been playing with the super fast frame rates on my camera. Last year I tried this out with the Blue Angels and posted on here about that. It worked well but they were rather distant. At RIAT, I decided to try again but with the Red Arrows this time. The syncro pair will make many crosses during the course of the show so I had a few opportunities.

First, let’s talk about what didn’t go so well. When you select this mode, it will fire off a bunch of shots – I set it to the maximum at 50 – and, when it has taken them, the camera will be effectively locked up until they finish writing. It doesn’t take long, and it shouldn’t matter because not much is happening for a while. However, if you are a dope and forget you have selected it and then take a shot of a plane coming around the turn towards you, you will get a lot of shots you didn’t intend and you may still be writing them when the cross actually happens. I am speculating, of course. No way I would make such a mistake.

The other issue I had was one of choosing focal length. On some crosses I zoomed out quite wide and the jets ended up being further away than expected and quite small in the frame although it gave me multiple framing options. This had been an over correction after having been too tight on a previous cross. Basic stuff but, at least with a bunch of crosses, I had more chances to sort things out.

Then we come to the crux of it. Did I get stuff I liked? Absolutely. I was always tracking the plane coming from the right so my left eye could see enough of the opposite jet, so I did run the risk of having the background jet in focus, but it all worked out fine. The biggest issue is that you end up with a ton of shots to work through. Then again, that is my story of RIAT as a whole! I have included so of the stills here but also an animated GIF of a sequence so you can see how close the frames are to each other. Please forgive the crappy colour space of the GIF.

Kemble’s Other Residents

1 Reply

My visit to the TBAG event at Kemble was quite a while ago now. However, still more to share from that day out. The airfield is home to the Buccaneers and the Phantoms that I have posted about but there are some other aircraft that are parked there. This includes one of the Ex-British Airways 747-400s that were painted in retro liveries. There is a Gnat painted in Red Arrows colours, and a Canberra PR9 in a silver scheme. Both look good.

A Hunter is also in a silver scheme which is a nice addition and there is a Bristol Britannia that I have posted about previously. These are all by or close to the café so any visitors to the airfield will have a few cool planes to check out during their visit.

The Spanish Typhoon Gets Some Speed

Leave a Reply

The weather for RIAT was variable over the course of the show. We did get some quite humid days. This did make for some spluffy performances from various fast jets. The Spanish Air Force brought a Typhoon for the show. The Luftwaffe had some on static and the Royal Air Force and Italian Air Force were displaying theirs so there was a chance to compare. Of the three displays, the Spanish jet was my favourite by a long way.

It is sometimes hard to justify what it is about a display that makes it better or worse than another. In the case of the Spanish Typhoon, I think the thing it achieved better than the others was to focus on what appeals to the casual viewer. As an aero guy with an interest in stability and control, I am more than willing to marvel at some of the cooler display manoeuvres that are really testing the technology of the planes. However, while some of those might be technically fascinating, they often do not make for a good “show”.

An example of this is high alpha rolling manoeuvres. The way a jet will roll around its velocity vector is great from an aero point of view but is rather dull to watch. Many displays include the same basic elements, and they all get a bit repetitive – particularly if you are spending several days at the show and see multiple performances. The Spanish display seemed to mix things up a bit. There was a lot of speed, a lot of tight turns, no messing around with the slower stuff and the sort of routine that has everyone watching. It didn’t hurt that it pulled a lot of moisture from the air too. Top marks to this pilot from me.

Video of TBAG’s Event

Leave a Reply

I blew parts of this one. This video doesn’t have the best bit of what I saw but, if I hadn’t told you that, you’d probably not know. When the Buccaneer was being run up, they undertook a bunch of tests on various systems. The wings were folded and unfolded. The speedbrake was extended and retracted. The bomb bay was rotated. The bit I didn’t get for some reason was the blown flaps. To get the chunky Bucc on to the small decks of the UK carriers, they utilised flap blowing. Air was ducted from the compressors of the engines to the flaps and this improved the low speed lift. It had been raining when the demo was undertaken and the blowing of the flaps was really visible with the moisture getting blown around. Sadly, that is not in this video. Everything else is though.

The Phantom Restoration Has Moved On

Leave a Reply

A little over two years ago, I made a brief visit to Kemble prior to attending a family wedding! One of the things I was surprised to find was a pair of Phantoms that were sitting stored by the road. When I went back for the Buccaneer event, the Phantoms had moved to a new location along one of the airport roads. A structure has been erected and one of the Phantoms is inside along with a bunch of parts. Outside was the raspberry ripple aircraft that had been used at Boscombe Down. It has undergone a lot of work and is looking in far better shape than when I last saw it. Still plenty to do but great progress.

Messing Up the F-35B Departure

Leave a Reply

Since I switched to my R3 bodies, I have been playing a lot more with low shutter speeds to emphasise speed in images. This has been a topic in multiple posts on the blog in recent years. However, it doesn’t always work out well. I know that the keeper rate will fall when shooting fast moving objects at low shutter speeds, but you hope/expect that you’ll get something worthwhile from the ones you take.

However, that doesn’t always happen. During Seafair last year, the US Marine Corps F-35B departed Boeing Field for its display. I decided to go low with the shutter speed from my location up on the tower with the aim of having the airfield background blurring out and leaving me with the plane as the dominant element in the shot with little distraction. However, when I came to go through the sequence of shots that I took, I had some sharp ones as it approached me and as it flew away but nothing that really pleased me as it was closest and alongside me.

Some of them weren’t terrible but it was a huge disappointment as I clicked through the images and came to the realisation that I had blown it. You can’t always get lucky, and I knew what I was doing so I can’t be totally surprised that it didn’t work out, but it was still a bit galling. Does this mean I won’t do it again? No. Getting the record shot is fine, but I am more bothered about having a shot I really like these days. Might as well give it a go!