MoD Boscombe Down - 22th October 2008

With the departure of the Merlin to Middle Wallop, Salisbury Operations frequency on the scanner went dead, save for a few training aircraft trying their luck for access to their usual haunts. "Negative, Salisbury Plain is closed to training aircraft due to Exercise Wessex Warrior". That being the case, we reluctantly bailed to Boscombe Down.

Boscombe is (or should that be was?!) far from my favourite shooting location but Dunny's local knowledge was far superior to mine and we headed out further down the approach, hoping to give ourselves a chance of some turning in shots, admittedly at 500 and 600mm respectively, but infinitely better than the horrible underside shots afforded by locations closer to the airfield.

Within seconds of parking up the 'ripple' Hawk arrived in the circuit and we were treated to a taster of what we might expect. It looked promising, albeit I'd not had time to get the 2x converter onto the 120-300mm f2.8!

We wandered a bit further down the road, rather than the byway. This set us back from the centreline a bit more and positioned us closer to where we thought they'd turn in.

Our next traffic was an Alphajet who just flew two instrument approaches - not really what we were after, but at the same time probably still providing my best captures of RAF examples to date!

Flying a much tighter pattern was the red and white Tucano. A great colour combination against that deep blue sky. 1/320th of a second at 600mm + 1.6x crop factor meant a disappointing hit rate, however.

Another of the Alphajets joined next. After two instrument approaches he performed one nice arcing one, before climbing steeply and undertaking a spiralling one, presumably with the throttles at or close to idle.

The luncheon interval ensued and we went for a drive down the fenceline to see what was on the ramp. In addition to the two Alphas and the Hawk we'd seen land, one of the BAC-111s, a VC-10 and what appeared to be a 'non-grey' looking two seat Harrier were lined up. The Harrier's lids were open and it looked highly promising that it might fly.

Eventually the strobe started to go round and she burst into life. After performing two 'Accels', a ritual undertaken at the start of every test flight that sees the engine powered up while the aircraft runs to the end of the runway, before turning around and doing the exact same thing on the way back, she finally got airborne. We headed back to our spot from earlier, where we caught a Junglie flying a conventional approach to the main, and also a Middle Wallop Apache performing a couple of instrument approaches.

Eventually the Harrier returned, performing one long circuit, and one nice tight one prior to landing. Almost certainly the highlight of the day. Not only is she green and sports the checkerboard photo markings, she's listed as being a (the only) Harrier T11A, and is more commonly seen operating from BAES's facility at Warton. I've certainly never shot her before...

That left just two aircraft still out, an Alpha and the ripple Hawk, and both were in the circuit together, with particularly nice light falling on the latter.

Never did I ever imagine that I could have such a good day outside the wire at Boscombe, but this was it! Turning in shots are infinitely more appealing than those horrible undersides! I'd definitely have no qualms about bailing there again if the Plain happened to be quiet...