Review Of 2004-2

As the Vietnam 777 was a big highlight we headed over to Edinburgh in the morning for it but back at Glasgow this Air Pullmantur was expected to make two visits during the day filling in for a tech My Travel aircraft with the return flight expected to arrive about the same time as we got back from Edinburgh.

Fortunately it was over an hour late so we were able to wait for it and get some nice landing shots as it glided in about 7pm.

This year a new spot for evening landers has appeared with a big grass bank in front of the new Rolls Royce plant and that is where I took this one from.

Vietnam Airlines 777

I went back again to Edinburgh the next day for some shots of the Vietnam 777 departing after the State visit.

I arrived 2 hours early and stayed at the Footbridge during all of my 4 hour stay as in the afternoon the sun is overhead and not much use for photos from the popular Ingliston spot so it was the best place to stay and take more long distance shots looking down the Runway.

As I suspected would happen the heathaze was dreadful and most of my photos on the Runway were very badly effected by it so I decided to use this one once the 777 was high enough not to be distored by haze, also there was a Bae 146 on approach behind it.

Travelcity 747

Both of these 747's above are owned by Air Atlanta and the airline operates all flights for Tour operator Travelcity Direct, they did four flights a week for a month in mid Summer this year and are expected to fly from July until October in 2005.

The normal Runway direction at Glasgow is 23 due to mainly Westerly winds and these older 747's take a lot of Runway to get airbourne so I shot them from the 05 end from raised ground on days when the weather was good.

162166 C2 Greyhound
US
(Prestwick 6-7-04).

G-VAST 747-400
Virgin Atlantic
(Prestwick 6-7-04).

OY-USA 757
UPS
(Edinburgh 26-7-04).

LZ-HMW TU154
Balkan Holidays
(Glasgow 25-7-04).

TC-APG 737
Pegasus
(Glasgow 30-7-04).

US Navy Greyhound

The USS Enterprise Aircraft Carrier was on excercise off of the Scottish coast and two US Navy C2 Greyhound's were based at Prestwick during this time, on the day I came here for a Virgin Atlantic 747 one of the Greyhounds was in the circuit and I managed to catch the last two touch and go's.

As you can see from the propwash it was quite humid this day and some good spirals are showing.

Virgin Atlantic 747

A Virgin Atlantic 747 arrived in the morning and parked near the top end of the short Runway to do a shoot for the BBC "Top Gear" TV car magazine program and this was the Presenter standing inside one of the engines to do his introducion piece for the telly.

It's purpose here was to run both engines on the Starboard side at full power while two cars were launched in front of the engies using a hydraulic ram.

It was a difficult angle to get the cars being blown over from where we were so I didn't manage to get the shot I was looking for of that.

This one has turned out to be the photo with the largest number of hits that I have on Airliners.net.

UPS 757

We had been keeping an eye on the weather for Edinburgh in the evenings as it is ideal after about 5-30pm for shots during mid Summer from the North side if the sun is shining so we took a chance this day arriving about 4pm before the first of two Balkan Holidays TU154's arrived and it worked out well, later that night I saw on the TV weather forecast that Edinburgh was the only place in the UK that had sun this day so lucky for us.

Edinburgh is very good for Cargo movements but a lot of them do not move until late in the evening and after dark but from 7pm during Summer you can expect to see a good five or six of the early Cargo flights.

This evening we saw arriving a Parcel Force HS748, Bluebird Cargo 737, BAC Express SD360 & F27 plus two Emerald HS748's. Departing was this UPS 757 above in the new colour scheme.

Balkan Holidays TU154

As mentioned in my Air Pullmantur 747 comments I have been using a new spot this year for shooting landers during the Summer evenings at Glasgow from a grass bank about 20 foot high outside of the recently completed new Rolls Royce Plant at Inchinnan and the last two on this row were taken from there.

Pegasus 737

As I like the view from here in the Summer evenings with sun behind I decided to make a quick trip out to shoot the Friday Pegasus 737 landing and just as well I made the late decision to do it as this one turned up in hybrid Pegasus/Myanmar colours.

I didn't know that it was the last Pegasus of their short program so it didn't come back and was repainted into full Pegasus colours not long after I shot it.

LZ-HMQ TU154
Balkan Holidays
(Glasgow 1-8-04).

G-BVKD 737
BMibaby
(Glasgow 6-8-04).

SE-DSX RJ100
Malmo Aviation
(Glasgow 14-8-04).

TF-JXA MD88
JET-X
(Glasgow 8-9-04).

HB-JIA MD90
Hello
(Glasgow 8-9-04).

Balkan Holidays TU154

This Summer there were very few sunny evenings at Glasgow so I only went to the North side on a handful of occasions due to this and even rarer were evenings when Runway 05 was in use like when I took this shot.

I figured out a few months before this that I could get nice shots through the fence wire if Runway 05 was being used for departures but had little opertunity to try it until this occasion, when doing this I don't go above an Aperture setting of F6.7 to avoid the green fence wire showing up in my photos.

BMibaby 737

One of the few times that I have manged to shoot the BMi baby "Wales" logojet at Glasgow and I knew it was coming as the one that comes in from Nottingham at 4-30pm always came back again at 7-30pm.

Malmo Aviation RJ100

For a few years now Malmo have operated a Summer program of flights at Glasgow on Saturdays and Sundays so an RJ100 positions in late on the Friday and night stops departing on early Saturday morning, this logojet was a big surprise and had just came out of the paint shop in this nice colour scheme.

I had a frustrating miss with this one as it taxied out in perfect conditions on the Saturday morning and I heard on my scanner it was cleared to "Alpha" which meant it would taxi straight by us at the Crash gate but an Easyjet 737 was on finals and the Tower Controller asked him if he wanted to go from "Bravo", what a disaster and all we could do was watch it turn up the wrong link short of us.

This one was the best I got of it as it didn't come back again on other weekends.

Hello MD90

Two MD80's were due in this day to take delegates home after a conference in Glasgow and the weather was perfect for them arriving on Runway 05, the Hello being a first visit for this new Airline.

After I got these shots into my PC and was viewing them I noticed a strange effect in front of the Hello MD90's engine and couldn't figure out what it was but a couple of days later when I was looking at the series of shots again it turned out that it's highly polished flaps had caused the sun to shine backwards onto the fuselage causing this odd effect.

RA-82080 AN124
Polet
(Prestwick 20-9-04).

G-RJXI EMB145
BMi
(Edinburgh 23-9-04).

SX-BLW 757
Air Scotland
(Edinburgh 23-9-04).

910502 C26 Metro
US Navy
(Glasgow 29-9-04).

Polet AN124

This was the first Polet AN124 to visit Prestwick since 1995 so I wanted some shots of it but the weather forecast was dreadful with heavy rain showers and strong winds expected but I went anyway as I fancied trying to shoot it looking down the Runway.

I spent two hours mostly under an umbrella trying to shelter from very heavy rain showers and 40 knot winds for the first thumb above and was very lucky to get the parked shot when a 15 second break appeared in the clouds, even then the sun only just made it out to the 124 and the crew bus arrived just after this.

Polet AN124

After finally managing a parked shot of the AN124 I made my way as quickly as possible to the other end of the Runway and got to my viewing spot as the Polet was taxing down to Runway 31 when another very heavy shower and gale force wind swept in.

As with most AN124's this one sat lined up for a 5 minute warm up prior to takeoff on Runway 31 which was just as well as it allowed the big rain shower to go through and skies to brighten up.

I had my recently acquired 1.4x Extender on my canon 100-400mm lense and intended using manual focus as it doesn't auto focus on it but removed it at the last minute which was just as well as it took a long run and climbed slowly so would have been too close for the shot I was looking for.

My camera was bouncing about even with Image Stabilisation on due to the very strong wind but all my shots turned out sharp enough to use and I selected this one with more of a ground level view and lots of spray behind from the shower just through.

This was one of my favourite shots of the year and another where my Canon 100-400mm lense had paid off as I took this at the full 400mm.

BMi EMB145

During the Summer months it is very difficult to achieve good shots looking down a Runway due to heat haze and even this day in late September I lost many shots from it taken earlier in the day that were out of focus but from late afternoon onwards the haze becomes less of a problem so much better for taking long distance photos.

Having managed a two aircraft on the Runway shot at the one time in March facing in the opposite direction (thumb on page 1) I decided to stay at the Footbridge until darkness and try for a similar view but this time with the Runway lights on.

I was just about to finish up and go home when these two Embraer 145's taxied out for departure and I managed to shoot them with only just enough light left to use a slow enough shutter speed while avoiding camera shake.

Air Scotland 757

After arriving in from Glasgow an hour earlier to pick up more passengers the Air Scotland called up for taxi with the light fading rapidly so I was pleased to see it move out smartly and as I hoped he requested a backtrack to the end of Runway 06, just what I needed.

One of the views I wanted was of a 757 size aircraft using the turning circle in very low light with the Runway lights on so I was lucky to get the two different views I was looking for about 15 minutes apart and left for home as soon as the Air Scotland 757 had departed.

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