couple from Newcastle Airport/Williamtown RAAF

With an upcoming airshow just around the corner (which are like hens teeth around here) I thought I'd go and get some practice. I got about 5 minutes of sunshine and grabbed the Embraer with some nice dark clouds looming up and a pair of hornets taking off after they swapped runways due to the weather.

I made the bug photo black and white as I was shooting almost 90* to the sun and as it was pretty bleak the color was pretty crap so I thought I'd experiment. This was a tricky one for me as I was standing on a park bench trying to get a clean shot through the tiny slot between the mesh fence and the barbed wire above it. 1/320th at 400mm at a range of about 600 meters, so I'm getting more stable too!

Newcastle airport is a single runway regional airport that has civilian on one side, mainly smaller commercial up to A320, and Williamtown RAAF on the other. It's home to Hornets (not the new super hornet unfortunately), Hawk trainers, PC-9 and the new Wedgetail early warning aircraft.

I am counting down to the airshow!

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I like the Hornet pics a lot. I used to watch the Mirages take off from there as a kid.

wow, that hornet shot is great Paul!

love them hornets !!!! great angle and comp as well for me ..

+1 for the Hornets pic. Got any more shots?

Good call on going B&W with the second shot. Really nice.

Nice shots PB. Why the airshow? Just the usual bi annual ?
I'm still waiting to catch the Super Hornets

Both of them are very nice shots!

Glad you like them guys. I have been trying to get that hornet shot for a long time now, but normally the heat haze kills it, but due to the rain that had just finished, the air temps and the runway was nice and cool, and the moisture was nice and high. I'm glad I hung around as I was about to go 10 minutes before.

DaleP wrote in post #10697437
+1 for the Hornets pic. Got any more shots?

I have thousands from the base! I'll see what others I can dig up from the same day when I get home.

Desertraptor wrote in post #10698297
Nice shots PB. Why the airshow? Just the usual bi annual ?
I'm still waiting to catch the Super Hornets

Why the airshow? Who cares, it's an airshow! Nah, seriously I think it is the bi annual. Last one was at Townsville of course.

Apparently the pig will be there for it's second to last display (apart from the Brisbane festival) Hanging to see the new hornet, wonder how close they'll let us get to it in the static display. Saw it on 60 minutes last week and they were told no filming the cockpit, and couldn't film from "certain angles" etc, etc. Seems they are a bit coy on showing too much off.