Branson is a media-loving opportunist.

What he said and did will not win him any future favours/business.

From Doug McVitie, Arran Aerospace MD:

“Sir Richard’s ingratiatingly biased pro-Airbus comments and his selective memory regarding the numerous Airbus France and Germany strikes last year smacks of posturing — a dangerous game to play in a duopoly. Boeing’s relationship with British Airways, the world’s largest operator of 747’s, will always be stronger than anything going on between Virgin and the US manufacturer, whether or not Sir Richard realises this.

He’s worried about late 787’s? Well, Virgin could always hang on until 2015 for Airbus A350XWB’s, by which time BA’s 787s should be firmly established on all competitive BA-Virgin routes.

A dangerous game indeed.”

Thats if we see an operational 787 by then………:p

in some good news, the Australian cricket team went over to the whittlesea Camp to spend time with the victims of the fires.

Glad to see that Ponting ad the team made the time and effort to bring smiles and good will.

good work guys !

.

Just a quick point – there are NO fires in or near Melbourne,

mere technicalities.

if i had of mentioned kingslake west, no one would know where that is.

Back in the 90’s when there were fires in the blue mountains of NSW, they were labled the sydney fires, the blue mountains are about an hour out of sydney.

In the scheme of things though, it is not important about the location, some prick has started the fire that has taken over 120 lives and that number is growing !

it has been beyond belief !!!

i have a friend who lives 1km from the main fires in melbourne and she is fine luckly.

the weather has been crazy, and with victoria having a 40+deg week it was a tinderbox waiting to explode.

Spot on Cloud 9 !!!!

beautiful shot !

Some nice shots Cloud_9.

the 450D has some great capabilities for an DSLR, i have one and i love it !!!

one thing i noticed about the photos is that they are a little soft and fuzzy. you might want to try and play with the settings a bit, you can adjust the sharpness of the 450D to allow more sharpness in the processing of the photo. it is easy to do that through the menu options. thats what i did with mine and i have some nice sharp shots.

i do like the 2nd Airfrance photo, looks tops.

Now that I have a 450D, hopefully the quality should improve somewhat.

Will post some more up when I get a chance!

your shots were fine except for one thing, sun was a big issue.

i noticed that alot of your shots the subject was dark because you were shooting towards the sun.

It looks like the camera settings picked up the dark side of the plane and slowed down the shutterspeed.

We have the same problem in sydney, if you are facing west in the afternoon, all you will get is sun and dark aircraft.

i have a 450D as well. you will get some fantastic shots from it, play around with it, it’s a great camera, just watch out where the sun is in relation to where you are taking the shots.

my Fav photo, the EK A380 with the BA tails in the foreground, BLOODY GREAT PIC !