So, yesterday I went to a large digital imaging trade show in Birmingham at the NEC. A friend of mine was intending to buy a biggish inkjet photo printer for a business he's setting up, and wanted to see it in action. I went along for the ride, and to get some of my better pictures printed for free in HUGE on the epson stand

It was a good show, and he got the printer and a load of extra consumables at a good price, only slightly more than I've ever spent on a vehicle While we were wandering around, I found the Fuji stand and had a play with the S9500 camera, the successor to the successor to the 602Z I currently have. I've been thinking of getting one for a while, and once I'd seen it in action it decided me so I bought one.

Anyway, while on the phone to a friend today I was fiddling with pointing the camera out the window, when I heard a very loud noise. Through the viewfinder, I got the following view:



Actually, when I first saw it it was a circle with lines coming out at angles, and when I unfroze enough to pres the shutter button a couple of seconds later that's what I got.

Now, the houses in the background are about 200 meters away. I'd guess that this idiot was perhaps 300-500 meters further than that at the most. He's probably no more than 150 meters up. I personally think that's a bit low for a built-up area!

He did a 270 degree turn at the same bank angle and altitude, and roared off into the distance. I have no idea what the point was.

pca

heh. That's awesome.

Wow- you guys in England get all the fun military fliers.
A friend near Hull says the A-10s use his house for practice straffing runs (no shots fired, of course).

I imagine that would be unnerving, to say the least.
He doesn't seem to mind, though, airplane-nut that he is.

We had a similar near miss like that a couple of months ago, with a 757. We are on the first floor and we looked up one afternoon to find and airliner headed straight at us.

At the last minute it banked violently and headed off in the other direction.

Wow! That's a C-130 cargo plane. Amazing plane, but not exactly "agile"... Loud too!

From the photo, I at first thought it was flying towards you, but when I look closely, he appears to be flying away... was I right on first view then?

"Look out, it's coming right at us!"

Oh yes, he was indeed coming straight towards me, at quite a high speed as well. We get a lot of Hercules flights around here, but not normally quite that low and violent.

Interestingly, it's probably an American one rather than a UK one. The US planes seem to often fly around minus any form of identification markings, which is how you can identify them as US ones

According to an RAF friend of mine, if you see three of them in formation it's normally the UK lot, two at once is the US side (or one of the UK guys got lost). Five in a row without markings flying very low along the railway line are the US AND UK forces preparing to invade Iraq six months before they declared war, but that's another story...

pca

I'll post a couple of links to C-130 videos once I get home, but believe me, they are VERY agile!

In the Falklands at Christmas they used to wave-hop at about 30 feet, then climb to get over the settlements and drop presents out the back while at crazy angles of attack. Just before stalling they often used to wing-over and drop back down to sea level.

Well you won't see them do that fully loaded, but unloaded - I doubt you could break one by slinging it around the sky.