Tag Archives: Pa-28

Bembridge Post Lunch Departures

While visiting the Island, we had gone to our hotel to check in. Earlier in the day, we had seen a few planes climbing out of the airport at Bembridge off in the distance. As Nancy was getting settled in, I made the short trip across to the airport to see if anything was still around. There were a few planes taxiing out. My guess is that people fly into Bembridge, walk across to The Propeller Inn for a spot of lunch and then head home again. Given the time, I suspect I was at the back end of the post lunch crews. Nothing seemed to be arriving. The wind meant the runway in use wasn’t so favourable for photos but some of them had gradual climb outs, so it wasn’t so bad. A few light aircraft shots before returning to the hotel!

Lunch at Lee On Solent

I may have paid a visit to Lee on Solent to go to the Hovercraft Museum as will appear (or might already have done so) in another post but it does happen to sit on the edge of an airfield. Airfields often provide an airport café, and I was after some lunch, so I made the short walk to theirs. It was a bloody cold day so the idea of being in somewhere warm overlooking the field, even if nothing much was happening seemed like a good plan.

The hot food was good, and the windows looked out over the field. There was an AW189 sitting out on the coastguard ramp but more of that another day. Meanwhile there were a few light aircraft and helicopter movements. I did head out to the viewing area outside the café on a couple of occasions to see some of the aircraft. I didn’t get everything moving, though. It was pretty cold and being outside all of the time didn’t look like fun.

The R44 arrival occurred while I was inside but, when I saw the occupants heading back out, I thought I might get the departure. However, if I was going to make my connection home, they would have to go swiftly. That didn’t seem like it was happening, and I didn’t want to wait an hour for the next connection. Eventually I bailed and as my journey home took me by the airfield, I could see them still on the ramp, so I am glad I didn’t wait.

Why Not Go For Low Shutter Speeds For Fun

A holiday visit to Paine Field saw that something interesting was heading for departure.  It was unlikely I would get across the field in time to catch it and I didn’t.  However, since I was there, I thought I might as well hang around for a bit and shoot some departures.  There were a few piston types heading out as well as a PC-12.  Since none of them were too important to me, I decided to play with shutter speeds around 1/100th of a second.  With the 500mm, this doesn’t result in a high keeper rate.

It does provide a lot of prop blur which was the point since, with no background, you aren’t getting any sense of speed.  It was more a case of seeing what I could get and having some panning practice.  When looking at the shots on the computer, some of them are clearly junk without much inspection.  Others look okay until you get zoomed in.  A few of them are sharp even zoomed right in and they are the ones that don’t get culled.