French ex, Puma's and gazelles at Wattisham.

[james.25]

Popped over to Wattisham after work on Thursday to see if I could catch any of the aircraft on exercise. Luck would have it that within half an hour of me being there I got 2 Gazelles, 1 RAF puma and 4 French Pumas along with a 2 ship of Apaches recovering. The light was nice too, although the sun did go behind the ONLY bit of cloud in the whole northern hemisphere! for about 5mins when the RAF Puma was getting hooked up to its underslung load. I stayed around to see the Pumas return after sunset and decided to move down to a different location to "Attempt" photographing them FARP'ing in almost complete darkness! Not the best and most cleanest images taken at high ISO, my 5DII struggles to nail AF at the best of times and with no IS lens it was a challenge to say the least.....

James
RAF Puma 1 web by James stannard, on Flickr

RAF Puma 2 web by James stannard, on Flickr

RAF Puma crew by James stannard, on Flickr

French Puma 1 web by James stannard, on Flickr

French Puma high overhead web by James stannard, on Flickr

Gazelle web by James stannard, on Flickr

Puma twilight web by James stannard, on Flickr

Puma dark by James stannard, on Flickr

[TeeJay]

Hi James
Nice set there, where were your locations for these?
I'm surprised nobody has commented so far!
Have heard lots of movements yesterday over head hear, but didn't have time to go to the base
Fingers crossed for today
All the best
Trev

[james.25]

Hi Trev, thanks.

The RAF puma shots are from crash gate 4? (I think) down the little lane from the village of wattisham at the south west corner of the base near the old 74sqd northern HAS site. Others were taken near the memorial crash gate, the after dark shots taken just up (heading west) from the memorial gate.

I've been informed there won't be much going on today (sunday) ....not sure how reliable that info is though....hope this helps...

All the best

James.

[TeeJay]

Cheers James, and you were right, its been a no fly day, typical as I had spare time today

[gary1701]

James/Trev,

Nice to see as I haven't been able to see any of this at first hand. Frustrating as this is certainly the first major exercise at Wattisham since the Herrick work up in 2005. I was actually at home rather than work on Friday due to yet another back injury and watched the coming and goings all day in the clear skies with mounting frustration. The amount of sorties flown by the RAF C-130/Chinooks and Pumas as well as the C-160 and French helos was excellent - the skies over Stowmarket haven't been that busy for years.

I probably would have gone up today but besides a AM sortie by a solo Apache, I've seen nothing!

Gary