Good question.

I think for the bigger commercial broadcasters (ITV) aviation is perceived as non mainstream, nerdy, and appealing to a non-attractive, low-spending demographic, ie grown-up blokes ( bad for advertisers) and offering little scope for lucrative telephone voting formats.

The BBC has such an entrenched agenda with their liberal, pro-environment, feminist, multi-cultural, anti-military mindset that aviation is somewhat suspect, and anyway, cookery progs are so much cheaper to make.

They DID turn out some quite decent Battle of Britain coverage last year, but that was probably a bit of an oasis in an aviation desert. Much of our aviation history has associations with the British Empire, which is a very uncomfortable subject for the BBC.

Anyway who needs boring planes, when we have the Olympics to look forward to? All that running, jumping and throwing stuff. Can’t wait !:cool:

I remember this Sea Fury at Booker in about 1979.

It seems to have had some ‘adventures’ in the subsequent years-

”20 August 2008 : A 1948 Hawker Sea Fury T-Mk.20, N51SF, operated by the Texas-based Cavanaugh Flight Museum, suffered an engine failure while on approach and landed short of the runway at Reno-Stead Airport, Reno, Nevada. The aircraft, which was to compete in next month’s National Championship Air Races, was substantially damaged, but the pilot was unhurt.”

I guess that explains the airframe damage.

A great report, and very atmospheric.

I have flown Tigers in December, but I don’t think it was quite as cold as that!

By Jove, I think he’s got it! 😉

Jolly good show, Top spotting, etc etc..

I too have a puzzle picture which I am trying to identify.

All I need is the type and identify of actual airframe- simples.

Canadian Bob Diemert gave this matter some thought a few years, he of the 8 seater Firefly restoration, and the restorer or the Strathallan Hurricane, amongst others.

Appalled at the cost of the new CF-18’s, he reckoned what Canada’s Air Force needed was a small tactical, battlefield aircraft, so cheap you could have 200 for the price of a jet.

The film of ‘The Defender’ is here http://www.nfb.ca/film/defender/ and is well worth a look!

Was Diemert a prophet without honour in his own land ? or just a nut………;)

Aviation art often becomes a prompt for ‘experts’ to become very generous with their ‘advice’.

I shall now proffer my advice, but as a painter myself, I hope it is in the right spirit. Painting aeroplanes in flight is challenging in may ways, but especially due to the fact that keep moving about, thus one is obliged to make use of secondary sources, ie models, or pictures.

Rich, your sister has clearly ( and reasonably) used two photographs, and has morphed them together to comprise a single, dynamic scene. The problem ( for any and every artist) is that the images will probably have been taken with different focal lengths, and thus have different vanishing points, where the lines of sight converge ( perspective) . Almost without exception, such compilations look wrong and appear as two disparate images pasted together.

Unless in formation, two aircraft on different trajectories frequently sit unhappily together, even if they are actually together in the source material.
Only by study and ‘feel’ can the artist begin to appreciate what is pleasing to the eye, and what jars. It is hard to explain, but if the ‘movement’ of the picture pulls in too many different directions at once, it feels unsatisfactory and muddled.

As a photographic resource, pictures taken in the 1930’s /40’s are often a very good starting point, being taken on standard lenses ( same as the human eyes- no compression) and also , being black and white quite contrasty, making a good start for a painting.

The cloudscape in your sisters painting is outstanding, and in my opinion that is the most compelling component in aviation art. She could have painted a small aeroplane ( maybe almost monotone) in a big sky and produced a powerful image. She shows great potential.

The two images hopefully illustrate comfortable and uncomfortable sightlines.