Go plane spotting, get of at Hatton Cross tube station (one station before LHR) and that’s it.

4th attempt: 54,328 seconds

Will £200 not even get me a camera with 10x optical zoom?!

The Fujifilm FinePix S5700 I saw was advertised at £140, which was ideal I thought?!

The thing is, 10x optical zoom does not necessarily mean it is great for aviation photography. A lense with 30-300 mm is great, a lense with 6-60 mm is kind a useless for aviation, yet both are 10x zoom. Besides, on compacts like those you also got shutter lack to deal with. Light strength is also important to check.

Now I must admit not knowing this camera myself. It might be perfect. All I am telling is not to go crazy over official specifications without actually trying it.

I hope you did not spend the extra 3 euros (2 pounds?) on priority seating? I returned this morning from Madrid and had priority seating as I was anxious to get a window seat. Turns out I was first on the bus driving to the plane. 😡

Fortunately I gambled right with the side the bus would be disembarking from so I did get on the plane first. Emergency row by the window at the right hand side, nice sunrise!

Nice photos, what’s up with the Pilatus? It seems to have more antennas and aerials then a council estate.

Simply put Dornier failed for the same reason why the granddaddy of all regionals, Fokker, went under. A simple lack of money.

Why no-one was interested in taking over the Dornier or Fokker programme is beyond me. There is a lot of inherent risk in picking up the pieces of a failed manufacturer. Especially an aircraft builder that has customers and suppliers the world over. Remember also that the Dornier (and Fokker) bankruptcy happened in periods of economic downturn.

Will the 732 be used on the whole network, or specific routes only? I would love to see it at AMS some day, but with the noise regulations I think that is unlikely?

Er…. His site is consuming too much of the host’s server and has been suspended. Unless I’m reading this wrong then it’s hardly the web hosters fault ?

Could not agree more. When the contract between the host and Ruud was made, no doubt a few guidelines regarding the amount of bandwidth and webspace would be allowed. Apparantly Ruud went over those guidelines, and quite generously as well.

Having said that, just shutting of the site and the mail without prior notification goes a bit far. At the very least they could have let Ruud keep the mail and enough bandwidth for him to create a single page explaining the sitatuation to his visitors. And the way I read Ruud’s mail I think it is exactly those two issues that pissed him of. But then, I do not know him so perhaps I am reading to much into it.