Here’s another one. I need to look up the true identity but the photo was taken at the Military Aviation Museum in Soesterberg, The Netherlands in 2002. The aircraft itself is actually owned by the Aviodrome at Lelystad (NL) but on loan to Soesterberg. Shoddy quality, I know, but I’ve got a better camera now so I guess I need to go back there one day.

Edit: according to a few sources this is a Fokker license built FB Mk.51 with c/n 6301, marked as MLD 06-43.

Interesting… slightly off-topic, but looking at St. Athan with Google Earth at the north-east of the airfield there’s a VC-10 in the early stages of being broken up. It has roundals on the wings which would make it one of the transports rather than a tanker. These Google Earth images are usually a couple of years old – generally 2003ish, so any ideas which VC-10? If you look carefully there’s a cockpit from another one nearby. Also, in the north-west side there’s an engineless VC-10 tanker – awaiting the same fate ?

There are some thoughts about those photos here: http://www.vc10.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=133 I think they are ZA142 (which is the one on the Airliners.net photo TobyV linked to) and XV103. The cockpit could be the remains of ZA144 of which the front section might still be around (see here for a photo).

How do you know they haven’t?

You don’t. Even the guys who work on that aircraft aren’t quite sure if it has ever happened (I used to be one of them).

Great photos!

Aaah, so these aren’t of much use then. And I’m afraid I cannot help you with the interior question. All the best with the project anyway!

Looks like he’s just a bit lazy 😀

Indeed (as Moggy also posted) these figures are for relatively small GA type aircraft. The problem is that there aren’t that many (if any) Lancaster sized types still around that are meant to operate from grass. Therefore as an operator you will need to write your own ops manual for these situations, or you need to dig out some very old charts (which probably don’t mean much now).

JDK pointed out that retardation on takeoff would not be very significant for a large aircraft, and I will admit to that, but on the other hand with a multi-engine aircraft you will also always need to look at an engine failure during TO situation. In that case you will need your brakes. Generally the heavier the aircraft the more crucial the lack of friction (or lesser friction) will be, either in an accelerate-stop scenario or during landing.

I think he needs to check his piston rings as well, there’s a lot of smoke that shouldn’t be there! (Not really a problem mounted as it is, but I wouldn’t fly behind it 😀 )

Just my 2 cents worth about the question asked in the first post: I agree with others that lens shake is probably a big factor in producing the blurryness in these shots. You used a 300mm lens for these photos and on your Canon that equates to a 450mm lens or thereabouts in 35mm equivalent (isn’t the cropfactor of a Canon 1,5?). Now a good rule of thumb to remember is that to get sharp images with long lenses, the slowest shutter speed to use is the inverse of the focal lenght of the lens, so 450mm -> 1/450. amitch points out that many photos on this forum were taken with 1/60 or less sometimes, now I’m not saying that this isn’t possible but firstly those photos were probably taken by photographers with a lot of experience in shooting fast moving subjects, and also they didn’t show you the 20 shots or so of the same aircraft that were blurry! There is no formula that you can dial into your camera that will give you great sharp photos every time, with fast aircraft and a long lens you will need a steady hand, a good panning technique, a tripod or monopod perhaps and practice, practice and practice. To start with the rule of thumb I mentioned might help.

On the Gripen shot you had most of the factors right, but still it came out blurry so either your hand wasn’t as steady as you thought, or the focus was out. This is the second issue: your camera focuses when you press the shutter halfway, what you need then is a focus mode that keeps on focussing, thereby tracking the subject. What could have happened is that you focused with the aircraft in the distance, kept tracking it and then pressed the shutter when you had the composition you wanted. If the camera remained focused on the distance the aircraft had when you first pressed the shutter halfway then you will also get a blurry result. On Nikons the focus mode that tracks the subject is AF-C, but I don’t know if it has the same name on a Canon, check your manual for that.

Robant makes a valid point about the option of resizing the image, but I think that that’s a trick you should only use once you get home and want to rescue an image to show on the internet. It is always better to start with a good shot obviously!

Good luck!