Amazing, not just the photos but also the fact that you had sun in the weekend. Last time I can remember having a good day of sun in the weekend at AMS was late january! No sun predicted for tomorrow either!

If this keeps up I might as well fork out 400 euros for a day trip to MAN. 😉

So they can disappoint even more people when BAA sends everyone away out of a terrorist fear? :diablo:

Hope the organisation for this will be just a tad more professionel than the concorde retirement. The 380 will probably attract fewer visitors, but still a whole lot!

So, they took the standard shipping container for granted.

Yes, at the time the container was breaking through. At first the standard 20ft and 40ft containers where mostly a US Army innovation (well, that’s what they claim, it was a Dutch lad that actually came up with the idea. The US Army just gave enough critical mass to make it popular). Since the US Army wanted to use these containers, and the 747 was originally intended for USAF use making the 747 compatibel with the container was just logical.

Can DC-10 and Tristar accommodate those standard containers?

No, I do not think they can. Even if they could, the cargo hatch is no way big enough. Perhaps a 20ft but you would have to wiggle it around whole lot before it gets in!

Which planes had those “standard aircraft cargo containers” been invented for?

Pretty much all of the jets! However, until the advent of the A300 the container would be used on one side of the hold, and the other side of the hold got another (smaller) container or loose cargo.

The 747’s width was based on the width of a standard shipping container. As you will know the 747 was designed as a USAF cargo plane and converted later to civilian use.

The A300’s width is based on two standard aircraft cargo containers (LD3?) side by side.

Don’t know about the other planes.

Unless you count the £120 or so i spent on the complete Babylon 5 DVD collection?

Guilty as charged! 😉 Can’t be that extravagant though, as there are already at least two members of this board that done the same. I know for a fact there are several fans of B5 on this board as well, so probably more people with the B5 series too.

As for my extravagance… well I suppose having a camera setup more expensive then my car would count. Although that probably says more about the state of my car then about my camera!

Driving to FRA to go plane spotting for the day once every 4 months or so (over 3 hours drive with good traffic) would count as excentric as well, so I have been told. 😉

[QUOTE=gary o]What’s your opinion,of the airports i’ve been to(DUB/SHN/MAN/LHR),i’d say dublin is pretty good,at MAN i only went to the car park,so perhaps i didn’t go to the best spots.LHR was Ok,on the queens building a while ago.

Has anybody been to places like AMS,DUS or ZRH as i’ve heard they’re pretty good.

I live half way between AMS and DUS, so the say I have been there in the past would be an understatement!

AMS is still the best airport I have ever been to from a spotting point of view. Not as busy as LHR or FRA that’s for sure. And the multitude or runways, of which always 3 are active, make it hard to catch everything. But the spots more then make up for it.

DUS is kind a nice if you are into shots of taxiing planes. Can get boring rather soon, but then I am of course spoiled with AMS.

Never been to ZRH, high on my to-do list. I hope this will be this year but since I also hope to find to a place of my own (instead of student lodging) this year that might be out of reach for now.

The spots around MAN are a whole lot better then the parking lot. Personally I do not regard the AVP that highly either. Had there not been a concorde and a Trident this place would not have been worth it, as you are shooting into the sun all day (at least when I was there late october 05).

LHR is great. At any other airport the spots would bore me to death (final approach, that’s about it) but LHR has such a great variety in airlines. Will be visited this year during my bi-annual London trip. Pretty much a tradition now: 5 days with Farnborough, Heathrow, Bexleyheath (what?), London itself and one more airport of choise (last year LGW this year probably LCY).

Was an America West A320 on a test flight after maintenance. The photo was/is also in the airliners.net database, but can not find it now. There have also been long threads at airliners.net about this both at the general and technical board. Can not find any of those threads either. Not surprising really as their search function is even less effective then a ouija board.