Tag Archives: Rafale

Rafale Display

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The Rafale has been in service for a long time now and exports have meant more countries operate it. I got to see some Indian Air Force examples when they came through Washington a couple of years ago. However, my experience of watching a display has been limited to the original Rafale A demonstrator and then the initial Rafale C development aircraft – both of which displayed at Farnborough. I have not seen a Rafale display since then.

This wasn’t the only reason I went to Cosford but it certainly was a big factor. The cancellation of RIAT had me thinking about what other air shows I might want to see and, while Cosford is not ideal from a lighting point of view with the crowd facing south-east, the knowledge that the French Air Force was bringing a Rafale to display was influential in my decision to go.

The display was excellent. I don’t know whether it is the characteristics of the aircraft and the nature of the display flying that the French Air Force goes for but this was an excellent show. (The French Mirage 2000 display always used to wow me too so there is a pattern.) The plane was constantly in motion and it really kept the attention of the crowd. There are definitely some lessons that other air forces could learn.

The display was just far enough into the show to get some benefit from the lighting coming around slightly. There was also some cloud which may have reduced the potential for silhouetting of the jet against the sky. I was a bit out of practice with my tracking but managed to get a few shots that I was happy with. I am not always in favour of special paint schemes for display jets but this one was no bad thing. I do hope to see the display again at some point – preferably in better lighting.

 

Indian Rafales Testing PNW Weather

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I may have worked on the Typhoon/EF2000 in my younger days and have a strong affinity for that plane, but I have always appreciated its competitor from next door, the Dassault Rafale.  The Rafale is a very elegant-looking airframe, and it has recently started to sell very well on the export market.  One of those customers is India and the Indian Air Force brought some of its jets to Alaska for an exercise.  They routed across the US with an overnight stop at McChord AFB (JBLM) before continuing on to Alaska.

I went out with a bunch of friends to see them arrive.  They came in two waves and the first arrived in some quite poor conditions.  This resulted in them making straight in approaches to the field.  This was a bit of grey jets and a grey sky, but it was still worthwhile.  There was a fair time between them showing up and the second wave and, by that time, the weather had improved considerably.  This allowed them to do a run in and break to landing.  Four jets came in but one was clearly offset – presumably getting some shots of the others.  They tightened up before the break, though.

The final turns varied in how tight they were but, since the earlier jets had allowed me to get some more standard side-on shots, I decided to get closer to their approach path.  I moved in a way for the first jet and then proceeded to sprint closer between each arrival in order to try and vary the angles a bit.  If there had been more jets or time, I might have gone for directly on the centerline to get a head on shot but that wasn’t possible.  What fun catching something very different to the norm for this area.