We had some pretty mixed weather during the course of RIAT this year. There was plenty of sun but also some rain. Even when it was dry, the humidity levels were pretty high and this meant that anyone wanting to get some vapour shots was going to have plenty of options. For the turboprop powered aircraft, when they were putting on the power, it meant that their props were pulling tip vortices. Here is a selection of shots of different planes extracting water from the air during their take offs.
During RIAT, the RAF undertook a role demo with the Chinook. As part of the display, they picked up an underslung load to fly around a bit. The crew under the helicopter were ready to hook on the load and then let out the cables to make sure it was picked up properly. As I watched this happening through a long lens, I realised that they weren’t alone under there. There was a photographer recording their activities. He appeared to have a stills camera and probably a video camera mounted above it. I thought it quite amusing that I was photographing someone photographing the display.
In the late ‘80s, I got to go to my first serious air shows. The Air Fete at Mildenhall was the first one I did that was a specific trip and it became a regular feature for me. One of the regular displays at that time was the Lockheed TR-1 from USAFE. The designation was a bit of a feeble effort to pretend that they weren’t U-2R airframes and that they were a tactical asset. I don’t think anyone bought that. A few years later, they were re-designated as U-2R so I guess there wasn’t much to distinguish them. With later upgrades and a new engine, these then became U-2S airframes.
We lived for a while in Huntingdon which was close to RAF Alconbury where they were based. If you want to see the widest HAS structures, Alconbury had them because the TR-1s lived in their own HAS. One would launch at 7am every morning to go and have a look at the neighbours to the east and you could use it as an alarm clock! Very regular. They were withdrawn to the US after the wall came down and so the only way to see them was with deployed aircraft operating from locations like Fairford.
Their presence there combined with the Eyes in the Skies theme of RIAT this year meant that there was the potential for a display of one of the aircraft. It wasn’t long after Beale AFB had held their show where a jet was also displayed so two displays in short order. A U-2 is not going to be ripping up the sky. However, it will climb rapidly – particularly as it won’t be fully fuelled – and you do get to see the approach and landing. We were also treated to a low pass along the runway followed by a steep climb away which was great because the original take of was a bit far off and didn’t result in any shots I was too happy with.
While one airframe was on display in the static lineup, the display aircraft was a bit more interesting because it was fitted with the Senior Span satellite communications mount on the spine of the aircraft. This is a big fairing and makes the plane look very different. There was also a shark mouth painted on the nose. All in all, a great addition to a show that already has a ton of cool performers.
Flashback to RIAT and 2019. I was working through the catalog looking for something for another project and came across these shots of Swedish Gripens departing from RAF Fairford after the show had concluded. A section departure is always more interesting than a singleton even if it does give you something to think about when deciding on which plane to focus on. The Gripen is a great looking jet and one that has been pretty successful given that it was built specifically for Swedish needs. Always happy to get to shoot one.
I was working through some shots from my last trip to RIAT in 2019. Amazingly enough, I hadn’t finished editing some of the shots from that visit and I wanted to get rid of a lot of surplus shots to help the old hard drive space issues! As I was working through them, I got to some shots of the A400M displays I saw over the course of the weekend. I think the A400M is a cracking looking jet. Whether it is doing what everyone wanted of it, I have no idea. I just know it looks great and is capable of some really impressive demos.
For some reason, I had been feeling very brave during RIAT when it came to shooting some of the props. I had gone with quite low shutter speeds with long lenses and the results were not necessarily all I would have wanted. There were always going to be blurry shots to get culled, but the number of sharp ones was a little lower than I would have liked. However, all was not a total loss, and I did get a bunch of shots that I was happy with.
Here is a selection of shots from across the show including the official displays by the Airbus test crew and some of the operator aircraft too. The weather for RIAT 2019 was not that great. We did get some nice light occasionally but one of the days was very wet (and I was feeling crappy too) and the others were overcast a lot of the time. Not the most exciting light for a grey painted plane but they had the potential for prop vortices. Will I have big prints of these on the wall? No, I don’t think so. However, it was okay and there will be other times, I hope.
Why, when my last visit to RIAT was in 2019, am I still working my way through some shots from that show? There are many potential reasons but none of them reflect too well on me so we shall move past that topic and on to what I shot at that show. Specifically, let’s look at the Red Arrows. When we used to live in the UK, we would see the Reds on a regular basis and would sometimes get a bit blasé about them. When you live elsewhere, they become a bit more fun to see.
Consequently, I did make the effort to get a few good shots of their displays. It would have been nice to have some slightly better light to shoot them in, but that show was not the best for weather. Take off is always nice since you are close to the formations, and they are potentially tightly grouped in the frame. There are always the crossing shots to go for and then the bigger formation breaks will be a target. All of these were part of my efforts that year. When I was young, the rollbacks were a favorite of mine. They do a variation on this now, but I am not quite so keen. It is a tough one to shoot anyway since you really want to be on the display axis to get the best effect. Even so, I was still pretty happy with what I got overall.
Lightroom has three methods for stitching the panoramas together. I tend to use one but for some shots, a different style is beneficial. I was flipping through some shots of an HH-101 Caesar helicopter that I took at RIAT in 2019. I also had a Danish AW101 that I had shot in pano format. The Danish airframe had not been shot as well as it could have been and I did not have sufficient coverage. I decided to try different versions of the stitching to see which one gave the best result. Some result in a more natural look while others look more fish eyed. I can also stitch in Photoshop which gives me more capability for filling in gaps but, with the tricky areas being the rotors, that wasn’t going to work well since the AI is not going to work that out. Stitching also allows some warping to fill edge gaps but this can mess with the alignment of the main part of the image. I tried a couple of versions and they are compared here.
I put together a selection of shots from the RIAT show of 2006 in this post. It was another four years before I was back for my next visit. This time I made a visit to the Park and View East rather than the west. This was the end at which everything was landing, and it also provided a good view of some of the arrivals as they taxied to the ramp.
The weather started out okay, but it got steadily worse resulting ion a torrential downpour. Some movements were in such low light that it was almost like shooting at night. The stormy weather passed and then the flying could resume. Given the variety of things that were showing up, I will focus this post on the arrival traffic, and we can add some of the displays in a different post.
Plenty of helicopters as well as the fast jets. I had not shot at this location before and I was not prepared for how crowded it could be and the way you needed to be at the front. That limited some of my shots unfortunately. Also, there was a lot of heat haze in the air so some of the nicer angles on the approach produced shots that are not sharp enough. Still, a fun day out. Drying out took a while that night though!
I was thinking back to previous RIAT shows when I was putting together the 2006 post here. RIAT was my first encounter with the B-2. I recall it showing up to a show one year for a flyby without landing. It flew through accompanied by a pair of F-15Cs, one on each wing. Then, another year – maybe the next but I don’t recall for sure – one was actually deployed to the show. It was parked up so close to everyone on the flight line. I took quite a few pictures of it because it was so new and interesting. (A few pictures in the film days was a let less than it became in the digital days!) Even now, I think a show would consider it quite a coup to have a B-2 on the ground.
When I lived in the UK, a trip to RIAT was a regular thing for me. After I started shooting digital, I was living in the US so RIAT was more than just a day trip. My first visit with the digital camera was in 2006. I had to be in the UK for work so I timed it to coincide with RIAT because, you know, it would have been rude not to. With RIAT canceled this year due to the ongoing virus issues, I figured I would jump back to this show to provide some highlights.
I spent two days there. I made my first arrivals day visit and spent the day at the west end which was really nice. Planes were arriving from that direction anyway so it worked out well. The conditions were really nice on both days too so it was a fun and successful shoot. Mikoyan-Gurevich brought there MiG-29OVT demonstrator with thrust vectoring and it flipped its way around the sky with abandon. There was the usual selection of types from around the world which makes RIAT so fun. There were also some older UK types making an appearance like the Canberra demonstration – the last RAF Canberra flights I saw – and the old Twin Pioneer.
A Czech Mil-24 Hind helicopter gunship in special tiger dquadron markings overflies RAF Fairford, UK.
Hopefully there is something in this selection that will be of interest from a great show. There have been more RIAT visits since so maybe I shall dig out some stuff from those years if I continue to struggle for material for future posts!
