Jim, I have the Columbus show marked on my calender.I will probally be doing the weekend.I bookmarked the website and will be checking it regulaly for updates.I hope to see many of you there.
I just got my copy of Bowen's Warbirds and between this forum and the book - all I can say is WOW - those babys are beautiful. Makes me want to drive up for the Columbus show - even if all i do is shoot them on the ground!
Can you get in early... and can you flood the tarmac with water in the predawn light... curious minds want to know!
Paul has been a good friend for years and he's as exceptionaI a human being as he is a shooter. We'll be burning up the digits together at GML 2007. The air to air opportunities are going to be truly historic. I don't know about flooding the ramp but I don't think I'll have any shortage of one of a kind opportunities.
I've spent the last two days with The new Mooney Acclaim, a beautiful, responsive, luxurious new product out of Kerrville Texas. Mooney aircraft have long been models of efficiency. Mooney was the first manufacturer to squeeze 1 knot of cruise speed for every horsepower. The Acclaim has the honor of being the fastest single engine piston certified aircraft, 230 knots at altitude, that's close to 270 mph!
We shot from before sun up to well after sunset yesterday, including a couple of hours of air to air. Winds were gusting to 33 kts 1,000 feet above the surface when we took off, so we knew it was going to be a challenge. The guys involved in the effort are consumate professionals, and, in spite of the challenges, we got some great images.
I guess it's proof that we love what we do. After getting up at 0' dark-thirty for several days and shooting solid into the evening, as I was leaving the airport tonight with our assignment wrapped up, I found myself out on the tarmac capturing this for grins......
I am sorry for the poor quality of this photo. It was taken sometime between 1967-1969 at the 1st Air Cav base, Camp Holloway, in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. Taken with somekind of Kodak camera. No need to tell me how bad it is, I already realize that. I just wanted to keep Jim's thread alive. Some nostalgia for the "air jocks".
Dan
1) Cobra Gun Ship http://www.pbase.com/mdbassman/image/74128143.jpg
Thanks man!! Your shots are fine and anyone knows it's hard to keep a camera steady when there's "incoming"! I'm just beginning to sort through the 2,700 images I shot with Mooney this week so there will be some others worthy of a post or two I hope. I might have set a personal record for the lowest shutter speed air to air during our couple hour mission. The image I posted was shot at 100th and we were in a tight right turn at about 135 kts. So, pulling a couple g's in a tight bank with 40 knot + winds in dusk light, I was on the ragged edge. Didn't know if I'd be able to recognize anything in the images but the tones were so sweet I had to try. A few minutes later I was down to 1/50th and quite a few of those are sharp! Better to be lucky than good!!!
That's an A37 right? I remember them from my days at Cam Ranh Bay.
Somewhere I have some slides from my time there.
Will have to dig them up to see if the are worth posting.
Having a camera permanently attached to your hand allows you to be ready in a second. Yesterday right after all the Mooney folks and their agency people headed for their respective corners of the world, I decided to relax a bit and go take some pictures. I heard the sweet tones of a round engine reverberating off the hangar, so I headed out to the runway. I shot as the pilot went round and round doing battle with a 30 degree cross wind at about 14 knots. I empathized with him each time he came around and the rudder was drumming left and right to keep the big North American headed in the right direction. For a second I was tempted to fire up ours and join him, but reason overtook me and I kept shooting.
I agree, and you can throw maturity in there too! After three days of 4 am wake-ups and 1 am lights out, I was just not sharp enough to fly the Six, but I could still capture a couple of pretty good stock shots.
Glad you like the shot. I've been keeping those Canon's hot, I've captured close to 4,000 images on one of my 1Ds MkII bodies since Monday morning, and there's still tomorrow's assignment. I sure wish Canon would pop with the sequel to the MKII, I love the camera but I'm ready for a bigger file and a faster buffer.
By the way, while that aircraft looks and sounds like a SIx, it's a Canadian Harvard, produced in Canada under license by North American. There are some subtle differences but no biggies.
