Hi Josh.

Compared to your first attempts these show much improvement! I still occasionally forget to check/adjust white balance myself, and get the odd strange colour cast as a result. So many things to set on the D-SLRs!!!

I travelled on that Flybe 146 many times…

Out of interest which lens(es) did you use? I have the slightly older EOS350D, and a couple of older EOS 350 35mm kit zoom lenses (plus the 350D kit lens supplied), and I find my photos are sometimes a bit “soft” using them, despite various attempts to tweak the camera settings. Were you using the standard Canon EOS400D kit lens or have you got something else? I suspect my older lenses are simply a bit too cheap and cheerful to get really pin sharp shots.

I work in offices based above South terminal at Gatwick, and know the spot on the Eastern perimeter road where you take some of your shots from. Maybe I’ll bring my camera in when the weather is a touch warmer and pop down there one lunchtime for a half an hour and see what I can catch.

Let me know (by PM) if you’re ever going to be there around lunchtime on a weekday and fancy meeting up, maybe I can pop down and say hi.

Paul F

I agree with Bmi-star, easyJet are by far one of, if not, the best LCC in Europe. Infact i feel they are better than some normal airlines. Of all the flights ive flown(not many i know), i was plesently suprised when i flew easy. People make out its hell flying them. But if you acctually give them a chance they are rather good. They dont bombard you with things to buy like ryanair. They just inform you that they are coming around with the snack or duty free trolly. And the leg room isnt at all too bad. I consider myself rather tall, and i found sitting in there seats rather comforatble. And most of all, people say there service is crap, i found there whole crew from Check in to arrival to be really friendly.

I think the only thing that has given easyJet this negative image is the TV show airline, that was based around them. It allways seems to show bad bits with angry customers, raging at there poor desk employees. The reason there raging, “There was a crash on the M25.”, well thats not easyJet’s problem. That is your own, it is your own resposibility to get to the airport in time. It really does tick me off that people insist on arriving at the airport too late for there flight, then they get caught in traffic. Then when they get to the airport they take it out on the employees. But anyway i seem to be veering away from the thread here. I feel that all those easyJet haters are really, really rather stupid. You have a choice. Pay roughly £60 for a return flight to Madrid, inc one hold and one cabin bag, with easyJet, then you buy a sandwich at smiths or something for £3. or pay roughly £100 for the same flight, inc hold bags of Xkg and one cabin bag, plus a complimentary sandwich and drink. Now im not sure about you, but for around 10 kg more luggage, a sandwich and a drink; £40 does seem to be a large amount for that.

Josh

Sorry Josh, I am not comparing easyJet to other low cost carriers, as I have little experience of others except Flybe (I use them to fly LGW-GCI return on a regular basis). I am primarily comparing squeezyjet to the BA “Eurotraveller” standard.

I agree that if you can fight your way into one of the extra legroom seats then some of ej’s aircraft and crews are quite pleasent, esp the Swiss registered planes used on the Gatwick-Geneva legs , however, I also remeber having had to shoehorn my 6′ 3″ self into a standard easyjet window seat for the (mercifully short) hop Gatwick to Amsterdam, and would prefer not to repeat the experience, esp on a 2hour flight to Spain. I value my health over saving a few quid, so I’ll avoid squeezyjet wherever possible, as I don’t fancy a dose of DVT.

Maybe if they actually honoured their supposed “boarding by numbered group” system more fully then they’d get my flights – If I continue to check in as soon as it is possible and get allocated into boarding group 1, but then find it’s a free for all once “special cases” have boarded, they’ll rarely get my cash.

When you get a little older, and a little wiser you’ll understand that low cost (in anything) is not the be all and end all in life 😉 .

However, I respect your views. For many people the advent of LCC has brought them the chance to fly more frequently (or even for the first time), and that can’t be all bad.

Paul F

Civil, Military – if it’s “historic” then it should be on here

I haven’t got time to look through any more web-fora than those we’ve got already!

I have to admit that when I posted shots of a B.707 a year or two back I wasn’t sure whether they should go here on Historic or on the Civil Forum, likewise, when I wanted info on a BAC 1-11 seen at Gatwick I wasn’t sure where to post – adding another forum might simplify those cases but it might also make my dilemna even worse. Maybe I should learn how to post thread links…

One thing I would ask is that new threads on all the Flypast fora are a little less “cryptic” than some of the more recent examples, so that their content is more obvious to forum browsers like me who often open a cryptically titled thread to find it doesn’t interest me.

When opening a new thread we should all remember that other viewers may not know what has triggerred our burning desire to post, so an explicit reference to the object content (e.g. aircraft type, airforce, airfield) might save other users some wasted time.

Okay, some people will still want to have a photo of an unknown aircraft, location, or component identified, but simply adding “component”, “type, “location” to the initial thread header would help.

Although I’ve always seen military historics as my main area of interest, time spent here has further improved my knowledge and love of the older airliners and light civils etc. “Choppers” and other whirly contraptions remain a bit of a closed book to me though 😮

What impresses me is that all levels of knowledge and expertise are here, and I have both helped others, and been helped in my interest myself.

I can understand why a split into historic civil and historic military might seem sensible, but personally I’m against it. If a thread doesn’t interest me (Civil or military 😮 ) I can simply to ignore it.

Paul F

easyJet/GB Airways takeover – Is it good for the customer?

Not sure the acquisition of GB Airways has actually been fully approved yet has it?

Interesting to note that it may well now cost a family of four more to fly Gatwick to Alicante or Murcia on the low cost airlines than it does/did on GB Airways.

Although low-cost carrier headline fares look better, by the time you’ve paid for any hold baggage (all inclusive on GB Airways/BA standard fares), meals (included in GB Airways ticket price) and any pre-booked extra legroom seats (to get back up to GB Airways standard leg room), and the various booking surcharges, then GB Airways total prices often appeared to work out lower than those offerred by the lowcost operators.

As Mr Caine used to say….Not a lot of people know that…

Paul F

Looks serious?

That staining on the port side of the engine compartment and rear fuselage doesn’t look good – suggest it may have been a little more serious!

Looks to me (as a total novice on these things) like they may possibly have sufferred an engine fireor overheat and triggered the fire extinguisher?

Or are the S61s always that discoloured in that area?

Paul F

My “Why” referred to the process of worrying about it, rather than the fact that they may be close to the end of the available list under the current system.

I fully understand that the allocation of a few ZZ prefix serials suggests the end of the current serials system may be close, though I suspect that the use of “ZZnnn” serials for the Hunters was a possibly deliberate allocation of a block of “out of sequence” serials set aside especially to denote use of a civilian operated machines, rather than the two serials being the next unallocated serials on the list.

As fatcivvy pointed out in an earlier post on the thread, MoD appear to have reached the “ZKnnn” serials for routine issue at present, rather than “ZZnnn”, so the end may not be as close as the Hunter serials suggest?.

Paul F

I would have thought the serial sequence question would be a serious consideration with the MoD now.

Why? None of the people in MoD at the moment will still be there when the problem arises – they’ll all be sitting by the fire enjoying their civil service pensions….so why should they worry about such matters?

And, as has been said above, with the current trend for an ever reducing defence spend, the current “register” system will probably run for far longer than might be expected – unless we plan to procure squadrons of A400M Transporters and wings and wings of JSFs :rolleyes:

Paul F

Neil Williams, MH434, Booker Airshow – 4th Sept 1977 Just imagine the Merlin engine note…

Was it really over twenty years ago?

Paul F

Apologies for image quality – taken using a Zenit EM using a Hanimex 70-210mm lens on cheap 35mm stock. Printed twenty years ago by a budget-price mailorder photo-lab…scanned in a hurry on teh office scanner, no time to tweak…etc