Some slightly better pictures of planes

Listening to: Shadows On A Flat Land

After a leetle bit of cropping and playing with various levels, here is a selection some of my good shots. Not the best I have ever taken, but I'm happy with them. Apologies to those on dialup.

The pic at top is a cropped enlargement of the "I need a longer lens" pic from the previous post. F-111's (the plane in the pic) have a fuel dump valve located between the engine exhaust pipes. Should the valve be opened below 350 knots airspeed, with afterburners on (spray fuel into the jet exhaust. Fuel ignites, doubles thrust. Quadruples fuel consumption. Hence only employed when necessary. Not all the time like in the movies) , the dumped fuel catches fire. This particular gimmick is known inspiringly as a 'Dump and burn'. Must have surprised the hell out of the first guy to discover/try it. Also terrifies small children and activates car alarms. Its even more spectacular at night. As the rate of fuel consumption for this can be measured in gallons per second, its probably no wonder the Australians haven't ratified the Kyoto protocol. Burns very clean though.


This is a Hornet pulling quite a bit of G as it gets yanked into a climb by its pilot. The vapour around the cockpit isn't smoke. It is water vapour generated by really low air pressure being generated by bits of the aircraft. (If you understand how lift works this makes perfect sense). It is exaggerated by turns, which increase the pitch of the wing into the airflow, creating more low pressure above the aerofoil. This is not the gentle banking and turning you get in an airliner. Guys flying these wear six point harnesses and anti-G suits.

The Hercules on the right is a generation newer than the on the left, which is why its engines don't generate as much smoke. The Boeing 707 in the middle is ancient, and is basically a noise and smoke generator disguised as an aircraft.
The F-111 can move its wings backwards and forwards in flight ('swing wings') depending on how fast it has to fly (compare the photo below to the others). In the sixties when it was designed this was very futuristic. Aerodynamic advances since then have made 'variable geometry' (the proper term) unnecessary in more modern designs. Still cool. It takes roughly twenty seconds to go from one extreme to the other. Watching a jet change shape as it flies past doesn't really get old.


More not smoke, generated by vortexes of air rolling off the wingtips. Go to Wellington airport on a rainy day and you can see passenger jets making these. Combination of humidity and localised low air pressure.
This manouvre is known as a 'bomb-burst'. Picture the upper three on the same flight path as the bottom one about two seconds earlier and you'll get the idea. Always gets the crowd going. Especially as in this case it signalled a transition from sedate formation flying to hard-out spectacular stuff by the individual aircraft. Way cool.

Despite my concerns at the time, as it turns out I got a whole heap of good photos. Plus watching planes for a couple of days was fun too. Airshows are one of my favourite things.