I had been looking forward to attending this airshow all year! The 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain & the 100th anniversary of Shoreham Airport (oldest commercial airport in the UK) ~ so a special trip.
I have not invested in a 400mm Canon Digital IS lens as yet, that will have to wait until next year, but I do have the 200mm variant. I also took with me my trusty Canon EOS 20D and the latest Tamron wide angle lens for close shots in and around the static display.
I set the ISO to 400 as the day was *very* misty ~ with low cloud base between 90 and 300 feet ~ mostly seemed to be about 150 feet. Lots of heavy showers peppered with that drizzly mist that just lingers. Ugh! I set the speed setting to 125/sec so as not to freeze the propellers in flight ~ I wanted to see 'spinning' movement!
I managed to take a couple hundred shots even though the flying was cut back to virtually nothing. I felt so sorry for the organisers, stallholders & event participants ~ they must have put so much into the organisation and preparation of the show. If it hadn't been for the weather, it would have been a fantastic day out!
The first flying event ended in disaster! You can see that the tip of the left wing took the initial force of the impact. Just as well as, in my opinion, the glider was released too low to the airfield (cloud cover being so low, I expect) ~ turned to lose speed and face into the wind ~ and then seemed to 'stall'.
This, naturally, meant that the flying display was put back by at least an hour whilst the ambulance carried the injured pilot to Worthing Accident & Emergency hospital + photo forensics were taken from the Police Helicopter. After the runway was cleared, we carried on the limited flying. Rain, rain and more rain!!!
Overall a great day ~ but a pity our typical British August weather got in the way! Oh well, maybe I will be able to attend next year?
This shot shows you a Mark 2 Hurricane B flying along runway 20 @ Shoreham Air Show 2010.
