Photo Opportunity - Two Lancasters together in the air.

[Mike Farley]

I quite like this one as after putting on a solo display, the BBMF Hurricane and Spitfire are about to rejoin the two Lancasters, thus are not in their usual positions for the standard formation. As seemed consistently to be the case at Eastbourne, VERA is following the BBMF Lancaster.

[Rose]

Yes you're right Mike, all the shots I have of the two Lancs have Vera following Thumper.
I've now completed my Airbourne gallery, which you can see here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rose_atki ... 117274767/

We're driving up to Coningsby on Sunday as we've booked a BBMF hangar tour on Monday to get up close and personal to both Vera and Thumper. More pics to come I took delivery of a Canon 70-200mm f/4 L IS USM lens this week, so will be taking that with me too

[Mike Farley]

Yes you're right Mike, all the shots I have of the two Lancs have Vera following Thumper.
I've now completed my Airbourne gallery, which you can see here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rose_atki ... 117274767/

Some good shots there, Rose.

We're driving up to Coningsby on Sunday as we've booked a BBMF hangar tour on Monday to get up close and personal to both Vera and Thumper. More pics to come

I had not heard before that it is possible to see the BBMF planes in their hangar. I have just checked and all the tickets to see both Lancasters together are sold out, of course. Enjoy your trip.

I took delivery of a Canon 70-200mm f/4 L IS USM lens this week, so will be taking that with me too

It's a good lens. Have fun with it.

[Mike Farley]

My shots from Eastbourne are now on flickr. There is at least one shot of each of the performances throughout the day, which started with a parachute drop and concluded with the Red Arrows.

https://flic.kr/s/aHsk1xQ6oX

[Rose]

Had a great trip up to Lincolnshire last weekend. We arived in time to see the two Lancasters fly into RAF Coningsby. We got there earlier than planned actually as the heritage centre at East Kirby which we'd planned to visit first, turned out to be closed on Sundays. So we drove on to Coningbsy, found the perfect parking spot right in front of the fence by the entrance to the BBMF hangar and sat down to await their arrival... only to be told they were running early and were due to arrive any minute ! By the time their actual scheduled arrival time came around, the planes had done a flypast, landed and were being towed into the hangar. The narrow road was 4 deep in stationary cars (with one sole policemen desperately trying to find the owner of one car who was blocking EVERYONE else from going anywhere !) and there were hundreds of people around us who'd missed the planes' arrival completely.
In case you're wondering how I got this viewpoint above the crowd... I was standing barefoot on the central console in the car, waist up out of the sunroof !! LOL


Coningsby by Rose Atkinson, on Flickr

Taking photos wasn't easy due to the chain link fence, but I got some reasonable shots using my newly acquired 70-200 lens Including this one of the Canadian Lancaster:


Vera by Rose Atkinson, on Flickr

We returned the following day for our tour of the BBMF hangar and a chance to get up close and personal to both Lancasters as well as a number of Spitfires and Hurricanes. One of the Spitfires flew out for a display and whenit returned, our group were allowed onto the pan briefly to take some photos.


Mechanics 1 by Rose Atkinson, on Flickr

[Mike Farley]

Thanks for the update, Rose, I had been wondering how you had got on. It was a stroke of good fortune that the heritage centre was closed and you were able to see the planes coming into RAF Coningsby. It funny how these things work out sometimes. I imagine that the people who missed out were not at all happy.