FighterControl

Gents,

Pretty standard fare at the forest entrance yesterday morning, but finally some blue skies combined with a day off work made a run over worthwhile. Also, a second test run with the newly acquired 7D MkII after being less than impressed with its focusing first time out a month ago. With a few setting changes it passed muster.

Early wave from the 492nd, and noticed that 97-0219 now shows a green star. I'm guessing it was the F-15E involved in the shoot down of a Iranian drone whilst deployed last year.







I suppose the more restrained markings the 492nd applied last year meant that they kept theirs, unlike the 494th this year.









Then the 494th flew a little later.











Gary

Usual fare, but super weather! Some great shots there

Great set of shots.

I've got some days off work this month and was thinking of taking a run over to Lakenheath, any advice on time day/ day of week is best or is it the usual pot luck as regards activity?

Hi,

I would keep a close eye on the Lakenheath section of the forum as info specific to the base tends to get posted there. I would tend to use the Monday at the start of a week to get a feel for the level of activity for that week. The daily logs posted in the heads up section are also quite handy in that regard as the pattern established on a Monday is frequently the pattern for Monday to Thursday. At the moment two of the three (the 492nd and 494th) units are in residence, with the 493rd away so that's probably quite good. Fridays are a bit hit and miss, as they generally - but not always - only fly morning to lunchtime. Yesterday was a 492nd launch of about 10 jets between 9 and 10 AM, recovering around 11 to 12, with the 494th putting up a similar amount around that time, recovering 1 to 2 PM. That can vary, often on a Friday they will fly earlier. Occasionally they give Fridays a miss altogether.

So although there are patterns that they follow, I would be wary of putting too much faith in it, as you say some of it is pot luck.

Gary

Nice landing shots, thanks for sharing! Like the banking Panther the most.

Regards, Edwin
www.final-approach.nl

Great shots!

Love that dual approach shot of 494th FS birds, hope the weather stays fine until I visit there in January.

Thanks for sharing

Great shots. As the owner of a 7D2 I'm interested in the 'tweeks' you made to the focussing, still a bit of issue for me with longer lenses. There are too many options!
Thanks
Peter

Hi Redfoot. The 7D2 I have has been acquired second hand from a friend, although it is pretty much in mint condition and has hardly been used. I have used the Mk1 for the last eight years and then the opportunity to get one at a lot lower cost than new was too good to pass up. I used it for the approach/runway shots on the post below, paired up with my 12 year old 100-400 Mk1 lens (as the above shots were as I have no plans to change the lens for the foreseeable future).

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=168831&p=1038575#p1038575

After I took those a lot of the frames were incredibly soft and even out of focus, although the examples on the post were the better shots. Over the years I have shot from Folly Rd many times and these results were worse than my 7Dmk1 with the same lens, which obviously isn't what you expect. Not being an expert on what I call the really 'technical' side of photography I took the camera/lens over to a mutual friend of both myself and the seller, who knows that stuff inside out and we ran through all the in depth focusing options, which I hadn't touched. The previous owner had changed a lot of the focusing options and had forgotten about it so we changed them back to a standard 'out of the box' configuration. Yesterday was the first time I'd tried it since the reset and I certainly had no repeat of the problems I had at Mildenhall a month ago. Focusing was at least as good, if not better than the old Mk1.

The close up of the nose was the old Mk1 body with a fixed 300mm prime, the rest were the new Mk2 body and my old 100-400 Mk1 lens.

Gary

nice set,especially #10

Hi Gary
Thanks for the information. I use the 400 5.6 with mixed results, I'll keep experimenting!
Cheers
Peter

Top set Gary, especially love the pairs approach

Take care

Trev