Wednesday had been a very long day for us after getting up at the crack of dawn on European Cup Final day so we made a later start and arrived at the 24L viewing spot just after 8-30am on a perfect warm sunny morning ready for some good shots of the departing Charters taking the Italian Football fans home.
Before I reached the top of the pathway I saw the tail of a Blue Panorama 737 rolling on takeoff which was a pity to miss as the only shots I got of one the day before were badly effected by heat haze on the far runway after it landed in early afternoon.
Most of the Eurofly fleet were still parked at the Terminal and a few Azzura's were on remote spots so there was pleny to shoot over the next couple of hours as the Eurofly's in particular came out one after another.
I had a particular shot in mind from the previous day that was best on a sunny morning so when a Virgin 747 that I knew was TF- registered came out from the terminal at 11-05am I decided this was the one and the spot that I was standing at gave me an angle to get most of the photographers in shot as you can see from this thumb (top row middle one), this shows what an excellent view you get from here.
I generally didn't stand where all these people are because my Canon D60 has a cropping factor of 1.6x meaning that a setting on my short lense of 50mm for example was actually equivalent to 80mm on a normal SLR and that meant that I couldn't fit in bigger aircraft because of how close you are from here so standing further back was best plus it allowed me more time to take some extra shots.
At 12-15pm a Volare A330 landed on 24R and this was the plane arriving to take the winners of the European Cup Final AC Milan home, it brought them in on the Monday evening but the weather was so dull that we didn't taken any photos that night.
Runways 24/06 left and right are offset and now that the time was after 12pm 24L was closed for the usual 3 hours due to the noise restriction agreement with local residents agreed before it was built so that meant that both landings and takeoffs were now on 24R until 3pm.
I have included below a shot of a Neos 737 on takeoff to show that ones of this size rotate pretty much straight in front and my shot with the D60 was 265mm on my lense making it equivalent to 420mm on a normal camera.
I-BIKC A320
Eurofly
(Manchester 29-5-03). |
G-TTMC A300
Air Scandic
(Manchester 29-5-03). |
TF-ATN 747
Virgin Atlantic
(Manchester 29-5-03). |
D-CSWF Metroliner
Hahn Air
(Manchester 29-5-03). |
I-VLEE A330
Volare
(Manchester 29-5-03). |
I-NEOS 737
Neos
(Manchester 29-5-03). |
B-KAB 747
Dragonair Cargo
(Manchester 29-5-03). |
At 1-30pm the sun was getting a bit too high for more shots so we headed off to get something to eat and made our way back again to the Viewing Park on the other side of the Airport for 2-45pm, too early really for good sun because it is overhead at this time of the day so I didn't bother taking much more until 4pm.
Some Eurofly A320's were still picking up Football fans and one arrived at 4-30pm just as another was taxiing out to depart so I got them both in shot.
The last good one arrived at 6-20pm that being a VLM Fokker 50 in a special colour scheme that had also visited in the morning but I had shot some slides of it then so was pleased to see it show up again, my shot below of it was after landing and taxiing in so it needed the full 300mm of my lense on the D60 making it the equivalent of a 480mm shot on a normal camera.
So with the time now 6-45pm it was time to leave for the 3 1/2 hour drive home, this turned out to be a very good trip with 1700 shots taken on the Digital Camera from the Monday to Thursday which was higher than I expected it to be due to multi shooting departures from 24L.
Manchester is by a long way the best Airport for the photographer in the UK with great views on either side of the Airport so it's not a matter of if I go back again but when and I'm sure that I'll be making a couple of visits in 2004.
For those interested in what the views are like here I have put together a map with photos that can be accessed by clicking on the blue dots and you can find this on the last page of my trip report by accessing the link below for page 5.
I-EEZG A320
Eurofly
(Manchester 29-5-03). |
G-JMAB 757-300
Thomas Cook
(Manchester 29-5-03). |
CS-TPC Fokker 100
Portugalia
(Manchester 29-5-03). |
OO-VLM Fokker 50
VLM
(Manchester 29-5-03). |
Page 1
(Monday 26th May 2003 (11 photo).