Tag Archives: West Sussex

Go for the Cars, Stay for the Helicopters

A day out at Goodwood Festival of Speed was clearly done to see the cars on show. However, there might have been a chance for a little aviation to be thrown into the mix. On the Friday of the show, I was working from home and heard a sequence of helicopters head overhead. About four helicopters seemed to be running a shuttle from a country house hotel near us across to Goodwood. Seems like a pretty decent idea. It’s probably not much more than fifteen minutes and means a nice spot to stay combined with no traffic. Maybe I should have given it a go.

Elite Helicopters from Goodwood was running the service. For the rest of the day, they were doing pleasure flights around the venue. At one point in the day, I headed across to the field that they had set up for the helicopters and sat watching the steady flow. A combination of JetRangers, LongRangers and JetRangerXs were being used. There were a number of pads and ground crews were sequencing passengers on and off. A one-way system meant that the departing helicopters would go around a cluster of trees and out the back passing the inbound traffic. They were certainly keeping busy.

I would have quite liked to do a ride, but I decided this was not the day for it. The hillside around the event would make for a good view. I learned to fly at the nearby Goodwood aerodrome and know that the Trundle looks nice with the horse racing course being cool to see too. Combine that with so much stuff on the ground for the festival, it would be a good trip.

I would probably be camera happy in that environment but, watching the flights, it did occur to me that everyone did seem to be busy watching it through their phone rather than just looking at it. I would probably be tempted to do something similar. That is when something like the Insta360 can help because you don’t have to frame anything. It can all be done after the event allowing you to just enjoy the moment. I hope they all enjoyed their flights.

Car Aerodynamics Beyond the Norm

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When you look at any modern car, the aerodynamic design is always going to be advanced since reducing drag is key to fuel economy. However, you will also see a bunch of stuff that is designed to look like it is aerodynamically important, but it is really just styling. Vanes that look like they do a lot are common but the one that is always there is a diffuser. The shaping of the underside of the rear of the car is designed to look like it is there to increase downforce. The underside of the rest of the car is hardly tailored for downforce, so this is really a styling cue.

There are cars, where the aero is significant, though. The Festival of Speed at Goodwood included an Aston Martin Valkyrie. This is a car where aero really does matter. In these two shots, focus on a couple of areas. The rear of the car has quite a diffuser and this one is definitely functional. A combination of flow route either side of the centre of the vehicle combining and expanding to enhance the downforce under the car. Then look near the front wheels in the wider shot. The wheels are isolated with the flow coming around them and then back out of the sides. So much effort went into this design.

Photomerge Likes Weird Stuff

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The panorama merge function in Lightroom is usually pretty good. It can have some odd quirks, and the three different projections can produce very different results at times but, on the whole, I rely on it for my pano creation. Every once in a while, though, it catches me out. At the Festival of Speed, I did find myself using a longer lens to get elements of a shot with the intent of stitching them together later. Partly, this was because the crew was working around the car and I took shots when they were in different places to aim to have an unobscured car in the final shot.

It was the Red Bull RB17 where I was playing with this. When I went to stitch the images together, Lightroom gave an old result. Instead of either having the whole person or no person, it managed to have parts of them only in the shot. I decided to use Photoshop’s photo merge function instead, but it gave the same results. However, it did this by outputting layers with masks which were then editable. I was able to go into the shots and get rid of the bits I didn’t want while bringing out the bits I did. Some of the blending is not perfect in the revised versions but, for a quick solution, it works fine. If I needed to do more with the images, I would fix the flaws with more care.

Goodwood House

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The Festival of Speed at Goodwood is spread throughout the grounds of the estate but the main route takes cars right past the front of Goodwood House. They always put up a sculpture involving cars of some sort in front of the house. This year it was three Singer 911s. A pretty dramatic structure. Seeing the house brings back big memories for me. I spent the summer of 1986 living in the stable block just to the left of the main house. That was a cracking summer. Being back there is a treat. Seeing the cars zipping by is an extra!