After a busy few months travelling and moving house, I've enjoyed a fairly relaxing time over the last few weeks, settling into my new office/study and getting acquainted with the village. We are now situated under the flightpath for East Midlands and during the evenings all manner of transport aircraft ply their trade in and out of Castle Donington. The droning turboprops and rumbling jets make a pleasant (to me, at least!) comparison to the whisper-quiet airliners that frequent the airport during the daytime hours. Their dwindling numbers has prompted me to get out and about to try and see as many of these types before they disappear from our skies completely. They may be noisy and inefficient, but they still hold a sense of historical importance and I feel it important to capture them on film before it's too late. I guess this sense of nostalgia has also been triggered by researching the article on the Jet Preservation Pioneers (page 18) and trawling through my photograph collection to help illustrate it. Although I am too young to remember Ormond Haydon Baillee (OHB) and Spencer Flack's Hunter (although I did see him race his Beech Baron to dramatic effect), I distinctly remember being invited to Cranfield as a 13-year-old to enjoy a day with Sandy Topen s Vintage Aircraft Team. I got to crawl all over the Vampires and Venoms and while the photographs are too poor to illustrate this magazine, they brought back many happy memories.
No comments:
Post a Comment