A rare Sunday of flying from RAF Cottesmore

[^^Gord^^]

Usually the RAF fly Mon to Fri, 9 to 5, in an attempt to minimise the impact to the people who live around the bases and to try to give the aircrew and ground crew as normal a life as possible.

The ash cloud has messed up the training and the pilots currency. Due to this RAF Cottesmore was open this weekend for some rare weekend flying. Here are some shots from today......


1)

2)

3)

4)

5)

6)

 

[NvidiaDan]

Amazingly sharp. Nice set

What kind of focal lengths are you using to get that close?.

 

[Throttle]

like no 2 gord as the heat of the thrust shows the forces involved, and no5 great detail in the shadows. How close were you,

 

[86JR]

Howcome they havent switched to Eurofighters yet ?

 

[neoboy]

Howcome they havent switched to Eurofighters yet ?

Cottesmore is also home to the naval squadrons (featured aircraft has RN marking on it) who use Harrier with VTOL capability, something that Eurofighter lacks since it wasn't designed for that purpose. Replacement for Harrier is the upcoming F35 which is some years away still.

 

[^^Gord^^]

Thanks for taking a look and posting comments guys!

Amazingly sharp. Nice set

What kind of focal lengths are you using to get that close?.

All but one of the photos were shot at 300mm. You can get very close to the Harriers at Cottesmore, especially on the taxiway for runway 22.

like no 2 gord as the heat of the thrust shows the forces involved, and no5 great detail in the shadows. How close were you,

Number 2 was a rolling carrier landing. It's a mix between a vertical landing and a convential landing. They come in on the glidepath as a convential landing but use the thrust vectoring to slow it right down. Impressive stuff!

Cottesmore is also home to the naval squadrons (featured aircraft has RN marking on it) who use Harrier with VTOL capability, something that Eurofighter lacks since it wasn't designed for that purpose. Replacement for Harrier is the upcoming F35 which is some years away still.

The markings are similar to the 800 NAS of the Navy's Fleet Air Arm but are actually IV Sqn RAF (and 1(F) Sqn for tail code 32).

As you've said, we need the Harrier still as it's the only aircraft that can operate from our carriers as they require an aircraft that can perform STOVL (Short Take Off Vertial Landing - they rarely use Verital Take Off so the VTOL term isn't used anymore).

The Harrier also has a full ground attack capability and is very good at Close Air Support (CAS). Typhoon at the moment only has a very basic ground attack capability on the some of the aircraft.

 

[No-One]

Some great shots there. I live in Oakham and thought it was odd they were flying around yesterday. Now I know why

 

[drunken fool]

Nice pics and a very warm day to be out shooting them!

Just another question for my impending Cottesmore/Conningsby/Waddington visit - do they do much flying on a friday or is it better to go wed/thur?

 

[^^Gord^^]

There doesn't tend to be any fall off of flying on Friday, sometimes they can still be flying at 6pm but Cottesmore is a hard one to call. Deployments to Cypress, Lossie and the carrier are semi regular can leave you with little action.

At the moment it's fairly busy as the pilots from IV (AC) Sqn have been split between 800 NAS and 1(F) Sqn meaning more flying per squadron as you would usually expect.

Make sure you go when runway 22 is on use.

 

[drunken fool]

cool, thanks again for the info.

I have a choice of tue, wed or friday next week. It's only 1 1/2 hours away so will keep an eye on the wind directions and see which the best day will be

 

[a1ex2001]

Prefer the look of the old FA2 but it's always nice to see a Harrier and it will be a sad day when such an incredible piece of design finally passes into history. Gread pictures Gord, the really bright sunshine on the weekend must have been a challenge!