The disadvantage of a Monday rapidly became apparent with more traffic than I was used to on the way up and a combination of that and managing to set my alarm 15 minutes later than I should have done meant I screeched to a halt in the car park with just a minute spare on the time of the programmed first flying slot - thankfully with a heavy frost and light dusting of snow on the ground it seemed unlikely that they'd take off on time and so it proved. The slight delay also gave time for my companion for the day to arrive from his drive across from Derby - and we convened at the fence as the jets were crewing in. A 6-ship duly taxied out shortly afterwards and we quickly realised that the runway in use was at our end which meant this:
...they don't often use that end so that was an unexpected treat!
6-ship sorties aren't the greatest to photograph as generally they are a bit "unbalanced" looking but we made the best of it and the weather certainly did us a favour early on with skies like this...
With just 6 jets on the line at the start of the day and all 6 having flown that meant we had a pretty solid idea of the time of the second flying slot so I seized the chance to head off and get some much needed diesel in the car and grab a sandwich before heading back in time for slot 2. Lo and behold another 6 ship - and in not quite such good skies sadly...some nice clouds though...
...and the rare use of the runway at our end meant scope for some shots of the jets on approach to land too...
Finally slot 3 gave us a coveted "Gypo" sortie - the 4 jets at the back of the formation which of course include the Synchro Pair. Annoyingly by this stage the sky had gone to a dull, flat grey, but the beauty of the dynamic flying you get from Gypo is that there's still options for shots even in those circumstances - particularly if you have a fairly solid grasp of where you need to be for the various different manouevres - and on this occasion I spotted them pulling round to practise the Gypo Pass and a quick dash up the fenceline netted me this series of shots...
Sometimes a day in the cold and nearly 6 hours of driving is worth it! We Pretty much gave up shooting after that - the light had gone, the sky was flat, and the final session of the day was a 3-ship repeating the same formation over and over , plus the temperature had dropped dramatically and it was making a determined effort to snow on us. I'll be planning another trip up shortly and will be hoping for more jets, more blue sky and more degrees centigrade too!
Robyn
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