Loud Tonkas, and even louder Strike Eagles

It's many years since I went to Holbeach Range, a real sign of changing times this was too, once upon a cold war time it was non-stop action here, now its a long wait for very little to happen, however the straffing runs by a Marham Tornado GR4 certainly blew the wax from the ears!

Lakenheath however was about as busy as normal, after very many visits here I was in search of shots that were way different to usual so I got right under the final approach path and used a 20mm lens, the clouds on the day really invited this tactic, I am very happy with the images, but not so happy that I had left my ear-defenders in the car!

Oh no civvies!!!

I've had a couple of visits to Pinewood and Longcross studios regarding a possible movie job, as these places are a stone's throw from Heathrow it seemed like a good idea to avoid the queues on the M25 and shoot some airliner images, I enjoyed it so much I also had a trip to Luton airport as well!
With the ongoing defence cuts civvie stuff might soon be all thats left for us plane spotters to photograph !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ospreys at Mildenhall

I have been out and about photographing aircraft quite a bit but have not been able to update this blog for a while so this is a bit of a catch-up posting.
First up is an RC135W that visited Mildenhall, it's an electronic intelligence gathering aircraft that I suspect was here as part of the effort to solve problems in Libya, at around the same time a US Navy PC3 Orion visited, it's late afternoon departure made for some great full-circle propeller blur with the low sun glinting off the blades.
By far the best visitors and big crowd pullers though were the 4 Bell Boeing CV-22B Osprey tilt rotor aircraft of the 20th SOW (special operations wing) from Cannon AFB, a little frustrating to catch up with them flying, but generally about 20-30 minutes before sundown was when they took to the air!
82 more shots of the Ospreys here http://www.flickr.com/photos/nigelblake/sets/72157626240782571/detail/