I figured some of you folks might be interested in this, and following on from some of the pics here I thought I'd put up a thread for people to see what work goes into these displays.
If any of you watched the TV last weekend, you will have seen many aircraft flying from all over the country to perform as part of Her Majesty's Jubilee Muster. I was fortunate enough to tag along with the Typhoons for their practice run the day before over Lincolnshire.
The only time a Typhoon nine-ship has been flown before was for RIAT in 2008, and this wasn't in a diamond formation. Photographically, I had very little reference and inspiration to take from online sources as this happens so rarely. I tried looking at some of the Red Arrows (who flew diamond-nines until the recent tragic events) but couldn't find the images in time. Air-air photography sorties usually require lots of communication beforehand to discuss all manner of things, most importantly our position relative to the Sun, and our route. I had a twenty minute chat with my pilot the night before we were due to fly. Having never photographed from a Typhoon before, I didn't know what to expect, and most of our twenty minute chat was focused on how the ejection seat works and what to do once we had bailed out.
Our briefing on the morning of the sortie was in typically relaxed aircrew style and the whole thing shown on Powerpoint. We were flying with 11 Typhoons, 9 in formation, 1 spare in case any of the formation jets went wrong, and us in a 'whip' role directing the formation with regards to who was flying short/long. In that respect, my job was easier; I had no say in where the aircraft were flying over, their height from the ground, and to an extent where our jet would be either until the formation had been 'whipped' into shape. Our route would take us out beyond Skegness to practice the routine to form up twice, then back inland to fly over Coningsby, Cranwell, Lincoln, Waddington and Scampton (the last one a cheeky inclusion to fly a diamond over the Red Arrows on the ground).
Following this we walked straight out to the jets; a line of Typhoons on our aircraft-servicing pan (ASP). I got strapped in, found that the small stowage box was full and had to ditch my fisheye lens and GoPro camera, sticking with just the 24-70mm lens I had fitted. Once we had power, the canopy came down and my oxygen mask fired up. Then we taxied out along the road in a line, cruising alongside a whole army of spotters who had gathered at our fenceline. This is probably about as close to cool as I'm ever likely to get.
My immediate impression was how difficut it had become to breath out. The mask actually acts as part of the G-suit, and inflates. The G-Suit is essentially the scientific solution to counteracting the forces of gravity on the body in high-speed turns. It inflates and frantically squeezes the hell out of you in a desperate attempt to push blood back into the bits that matter; your brain and your eyes. A 'black-out', contrary to popular belief isn't becoming unconscious. It's blood being pulled away from the eyes, leaving you temporarily blind. A 'G-lock' (or 'grey out' as sometimes called by the Yanks) is pulling blood away from the brain, and this sends you unconscious. The suit itself, a massive improvement over most, is still bulky through all the safety kit required in case things go wrong. An immersion suit, essentially a military grade wetsuit, covers a baby like all-in-one thermal, as well as a polo neck and some long-johns. On top of all this goes your G-Suit. I tell you this to give you an idea of the kind of environment we were working from - very cramped and VERY warm. I tried to get as used to it as I can, moving my neck and head around, seeing how far round I could turn. Then practiced getting a couple of shots to see what freedom of movement I had with the camera. This was taken by a friend of mine:
So, take-off. The easiest way to describe it is like accelerating in a very fast car with only one gear. Very progressive and smooth, although the wind/ground noise are an underlying indicator of just how fast you're actually going. The moment the wheels lift off the ground, it becomes relatively quiet, and within seconds we were through the cloud base and in a clearing with more cloud above us, flying at around 1000ft.
I loved this first part, there were no other aircraft in sight as we had taken off individually, so I got to sit back and enjoy the experience. My biggest hate of photography is the tunnel vision you get behind a lens, so in this sort of thing I always try to take a few moments to lower the camera and actually experience it. In minutes, we were over Skegness, and the spare had joined us.
Heading out to sea, and the view from the HUD:
In the above low-res version it's almost impossible to see, but we had started to catch up to the other jets and there actually six Typhoons visible in the left-hand side of that shot. It was a real 'battle of britain' moment; the jets were staggered across the sky at this point and we were heading into some dark cloud. I started cursing myself for not bringing the 70-200mm lens with me, but I didn't have the space to stow it and it would have been useless for the formation shots I had actually been invited to take.
We began banking left to our first waypoint:
The jets began to form up, and it was my pilots job (Steve) to start the whipping process. Here he is looking down at the formation as they join together. From here, he will tell them whether they need to fly forwards/backwards/left/right to ensure the symmetry is as perfect as possible.
While this goes on, there's not a great deal I can do, other than tell him if I spot anyone out. So, I grab an obligatory self-portrait in the rear-view mirror.
First attempt, and the guys are pretty much spot on. It's worth noting that they're not display pilots, and formation flying is pretty specialist:
A side-on shot shows how the jets fly staggered, to prevent dirty air entering the intakes. This makes getting a reference from the other jets very difficult, and so knowing if you're in position or not is tricky, hence the whip.
Then it was back inland, our first port of call was the XI Sqn association day at RAF Coningsby. Here's a shot from the ground, the formation on the left, and our relative position in the whip on the right:
As you can see, they look brilliant. Our route demanded a few high-degree turns, which were massively difficult to stay in formation with:
All the flypasts were on schedule and bang on to plan. You might think that my job getting these pictures was pretty easy...but, as the whip is above, we spent a lot of time inverted, accelerating into position, and pulling very tight turns to get across to the other side of the formation quickly. In short, I'm a fit and healthy guy, and felt like someone had kicked the shit out of me for two days afterwards. These guys really are superhuman to do this day in and day out.
This was a truly brilliant experience for me, and I'm sure it was for the pilots involved who went on to fly over the Queen the following day.
I have hundreds of shot from above, and over the places we flew over. Here are a few of my favourites:
Lincoln Cathedral:
The ASP at RAF Scamtpon, home of the Red Arrows:
Thanks for taking the time to read what inadvertently became a short novel!
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Originally Posted by Garrett_T25
...............I'm guessing slim to no chance haha.
