Wings Over Illawarra 2017 - flickr album links up

I attended on the Saturday (6th May). Absolutely glorious weather, the beautiful backdrop of the southern highlands, and a non-stop program that had something happening in the air pretty much every single minute of the day, all of which made for an awesome day out. Very well organised by the WOI, HARS and airport staff.

I've got a couple of hundred stills to go through and about an hour of video to edit, but here's a few to get us going. Shot on my mate's Sony HX-300 and my Pixel.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/...073741830.100007785972372&type=1&l=b27fa1a665

I'll upload to photobucket tomorrow.

 

Nice teaser, give us more!

 

Thanks mate, incoming.

 

Okay, here we go.

Huge thanks must go to my mate Chris Bruce who provided most of the source images from his Sony HX-300 for me to edit and scale. A few shots were taken on my Pixel.
I'm still tweaking a few shots, I'll stick up a link to the full album of ~75 photos once I'm done.
It really was a great day out for $37.50, can't wait for next year!

Anyone interested in seeing some of the historic aircraft should note that HARS is holding their monthly "Tarmac Day" from today through Sunday, 9.30am to 3.30pm, $15/$5 admission.
Many of the aircraft will be rolled out on the ramp for some great photo ops, and you can sit in the cockpits of several aircraft including the F-111C and the Neptune.
http://hars.org.au/2016/01/hars-tarmac-days/

#1. McDonnell Douglas F/A-18A Hornet



#2. Replica Fokker DR.1 and Royal Aircraft Factory SE.5a (with owner/pilot Andrew Carter in center frame)



#3. de Havilland DHC-4 Caribou (Pratt & Whitney "Twin Wasp")



#4. General Dynamics F-111C



#5. F-111 Cockpit



#6. CAC CA-27 Sabre Mk.32



#7. Sikorsky MH-60R Seahawk "Romeo"



#8. F/A-18A Hornet



#9. Grumman TBM-3E Avenger



#10. (F-R) BAC Jet Provost T5A, Aero L-39C Albatross, CAC CA-27 Sabre, CAC CA-18 Mustang Mk.21, Marchetti S211



#11. NHI MRH-90 Taipan & Boeing 747-400



#12. NHI MRH-90 Taipan



#13. Sikorsky S-70A-9 Blackhawk



#14. Sikorsky S-70A-9 Blackhawk turboshaft



#15. Dassault Mirage IIIC



#16. de Havilland DHC-4 Caribou



#17. Lockheed P2V-7 Neptune



#18. #17. Lockheed P2V-7 Neptune



#19. CAC CA-18 Mustang Mk. 21



#20. TBM-3E Avenger and F/A-18A Hornet

 

Come on.. Hurry up .. the audience is waiting hehe

 

Done mate!

 

So that's where A40-037 was going with those joyriders
(spotted leaving Canberra on the Friday)

 

Good spot mate!

We assumed she came over from HMAS Albatross with the Seahawk and the Squirrels - which definitely flew out of that base, I got to have a brief chat with the Seahawk pilot.
He was a bit wistful about the "end of an era" with the jack-of-all-trades Bravo, but excited about the new anti-sub capabilities of the Romeo.

 

Very nice Chris..

How good is that Avenger.. such an amazing sight.. The Provost also looked pretty sweet too..

Shame that the FW-190 had brake issues and couldn't fly on Saturday (but was fixed for sunday)..

Will definitely have to try and make it for next years as houses/escarpment in the background make for interesting photos..

 

Thanks Duncan. Yeah, the Avenger was something special alright... sounded like nothing else in the air that day, this amazingly low rumble/growl.

I was pretty impressed by the Provost too, well... all the "early jets" really.
The Albatross and Marchetti both did great displays as well. Standing right next to the Sabre and the Hornets as they fired up was something awesome too.

Bit of a shame we missed the 190 on the Sunday, and there was a Hawker Hurricane on the program that also suffered mechanical issues and didn't fly.
Fingers crossed for next year! It's a great place to shoot aircraft, those cliffs under that sky make for an impressive backdrop.

I'm not real happy with photobucket's lack of fullscreen (unless I'm being incredibly stupid and missing something really obvious) and the amount of ads, so I'll be rehosting on flickr shortly.
Also going to be using these images to teach myself a bit of retouching/colour correction etc. I've got some pics of the warbirds that will make for a nice B&W album.

EDIT: Here's one of the Roulettes shots from my Pixel, re-cropped and with the curves tweaked a bit, but I've managed to lose some sharpness along the way somehow.


Roulettes_WOI2017_014_corrected by Chris Talbot, on Flickr

And here's the Avenger redone, but I can see that I've overdone it a bit on the Hue/Saturation and created some banding/speckling in the sky.
Practice makes perfect I guess. I suppose setting up some presets for consistency might help a bit too.


Grumman TBM Avenger_WOI2017_001_corrected by Chris Talbot, on Flickr

Now, time to learn OpenShot and edit some video.

 

Loving the Grumman Looks amazing.

 

Thanks Chilled.
I really wanted to get some shots of the wings unfolding, but she taxied with wings folded and locked them down just before starting her takeoff run (as she'd do on a carrier) and I was back down at the middle of the runway at that point.
I'm in the process of editing video so you can hear what it sounds like shortly...

 

A small correction,
The SE.5a was built by the Royal Aircraft Factory, a different outfit than Sopwith who produced equally famous aircraft such as the Triplane, Pup, Camel and Snipe.

In 1918 the Royal Aircraft Factory was re-named the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) after the formation of the Royal Air Force so as to avoid any confusion between the two.

 

Awesome photos. Love the F-111!!! Also, good to see the Black Hawk and Seahawk there.

 

Thanks for the info Bern, edited.

Thanks mate.

flickr album links:

Jets: https://flic.kr/s/aHskZJmqs8
Choppers: https://flic.kr/s/aHskV3hcMr
Warbirds: https://flic.kr/s/aHskZzgyDJ
Roulettes: https://flic.kr/s/aHskUUo7VQ

Video should be done sometime next week, waiting on some footage from a mate.