Coming 'round the mountain...
Caught the Air Force Thunderbirds on Saturday with Bill and Carla and nephews too numerous to count (ok, there were three).
Soviet MIGs, a 15 and a 17
I quickly gave up on pictures of planes without smoke. The AF can grab them out of the air, but unless you are a plane freak, like say Bryan, only so much of that is entertaining. I was more curious about who bought a MIG and restored it for airshows - they flew a mock battle with an F-16. The F-16 won.
Look at the pretty colors
Carla and I speculated on the cost of the entire operation. I put it down to recruiting budget, especially the good-looking young women in fatigues handing out plastice toy planes to all the kids (and me, mine is orange). The Air Force cadets did the parachute jumping exhibition. Oracle and Geico had barn-stormer planes for pure PR value, figuring at least some hundreds of thousands in the audience each day. But some of the other craft must be labors of love.
Lots of smoke but no fire
Full frame, no crop.
Shooting with the 70-200 Vr + the 1.4 Kenko teleconverter
Same image, middle third.
4288 x 2848 pixels gives lots of room to crop!
That's 1/1250th of a second
Bill gave me the heads up to look for this shot. I was tracking the one on the left, because my sightline was obscurred on the right. Not that I had a better than 50/50 chance of guessing which one would be in front.
a 500 pixel-wide portion of the picture, unaltered, unfiltered, just as shot
I believe those are the pilot's hands. Incredible training. A great day to be doing aerial work. Thanks Bill and Carla for letting me tag along.
Comments (2)
I am soooooo jealous. Looks like a fun time was had and that new toy of yours is a spectacular piece of technology. 1100?...... Wow.
Posted by Bryan William Jones | June 13, 2006 9:10 AM
Posted on June 13, 2006 09:10
Oh and what you are seeing are not the pilots hands per se. The tan thing on the left side of the cockpit is the pilots left leg as in the F-16, the seat is considerably reclined so that the pilot is in almost a recumbent position to better deal with the G-forces. The object on the right is likely the pilots arm over his leg.
Posted by Bryan William Jones | June 13, 2006 8:53 PM
Posted on June 13, 2006 20:53