Civil stuff at Stansted

OK its not fast jets down low in the Welsh valleys still, hopefully the weather will coincide with a gap in my schedule so I can get there; but Stansted for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon can be quite good too, the planes are colourful!
NigelBlakephoto is now on Twitter too.

Zero six, perfect!

I find it very difficult to drive past Lakenheath and not stop! On Thursday I was there for quite a long time as the weather was good, the wind was from the east and departures were zero six.

Need a fast jet fix!

I really do need a fast jet fix, I haven't been up a Welsh hill for ages, a combination of too many other demands on my time, my Barn Owl addiction (see my birds blog), the weather and that it's a long journey to Wales and "The Loop" has been lacking in activity compared to how it was last year.
However I have popped into Mildenhall a few times when I've been out that way, had a couple of visits to Luton airport and shot a few "civvies" and I have also started scanning a vast amount of my old slides too, see the F-111F image below (and lots more SR71, Phantoms etc on my Flickr). Now! I know it's easy to look back with "rose tinted specs" on and bang on about how good the old days were.......... but the old days were just awesome!

Eagles again

I've not been out to photograph aircraft as much recently, mainly because its a long way to the "Mach loop" and the days are short, I have had a couple of trips down there though, not much traffic and some pretty dull weather, although a couple of Harriers a Tornado and an F15e or two made it worthwhile!
I also had a day at Lakenheath shooting F15s in their own heat haze, that was a good day.

Lysander and sunset.

With my time being taken up by a catalogue shoot at the moment I've not had a chance to get to Wales for a couple of weeks, however I have managed to get a few images of some of the Old Warden aircraft.
The Lysander put on a great display in some real nice light.

Corris and Cad

5 days in the hills (14th-18th) produced a great variety of Images, Monday, Wednesday and Friday being the busy days, Tuesday was a long wait for very little and Thursday was a slow day and what did show up was just a bit too high.
The weather and the USAFE did us proud again, the F15E Strike Eagles from Lakenheath showed up a few times, the passes around Corris on the Wednesday being some of the most spectacular I have ever seen, the moist air produced some serious vapour when the 15's turned.
In all a good mix of jets, some fantastic fast and low Harriers, with the stars of the week being Typhoon's from Coningsby, not seen them for a while, and the Saudi Tonka in a grey paint scheme from Warton.

2 hills, loads of Eagles!

It was a slow day really, a slow arduous climb to Corris with all my kit on my back; just one Herc and then one pass from the LN boys and a long wait for nowt else until 1:15 when I made the move to Cad west. I missed a Grob tutor on the way up, yes I was that slow!
Afternoon was slow too, two F15Es gave a couple of high passes but a GR-4 did the biz screeching through the notch at perfect height!
Then, just when it seemed like time to pack up and go home, the Strike Eagles showed up again, and again and again in awesome late evening light, fantastic!