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Three Avro Lancasters
at East Kirkby Airfield September 7th |
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Following on from the Middleton St George Lancaster
event, and after a week being grounded at Middleton with a U/S engine, the
Canadian Lancaster rejoined the BBMF Lancaster for displays.
East Kirkby airfield is home to Lancaster "Just Jane". This aircraft is running and can be taxied, and is slowly being returned to airworthy condition. With the Canadian Lancaster in the UK, the opportunity to get two Lancs flying over head with a third running on the ground was too good to miss, and East Kirkby arranged a date where all 5000 tickets sold out rapidly. They managed to get a second date, also limited to 5000 tickets, and I was lucky to get one. Due to the engine failure, the first planned "3 Lancs" event at East Kirkby on September 2nd was cancelled and rearranged for the 14th. Fortunately for me, my ticket was for the second "3 Lancs" event on September 7th. This now became the first to happen. |
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| "Just Jane" was to make three taxi runs across the day, the last being with the other two Lancasters. This gave plenty of time to look around the museum. There were several military vehicles on display outdoors and in the hangar, and the Dakota was also out in the sunshine, though the airfield was shrouded in mist until mid morning. Below is the museum barracks, briefing room, Hampden project and Wellington remains. | |||
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| The 11am taxi run was still quite misty though the Sun was trying to break through. By the time of the 1:30pm taxi run, the Sun was out, there was blue sky and white clouds and it was hot. | |||
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The first two taxi runs gave me an opportunity to try different lenses to see what field of view I would have to try and catch all three Lancasters in one shot. I decided to take no chances and would use the 18-55mm lens for the first pass, then swap to the 70-300mm lens for the other passes. There would be four passes in all; from the left, right, and two from straight ahead. | ||
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| About 3:50pm, "Jane" was fired up and taxied out into the field ready for the other two Lancasters. Knowing they were coming down from Scotland, I had my eyes straining behind the crowd to the North, and about 4pm, saw two small black dots coming our way. For the next eight minutes, the two Lancasters buzzed the field while "Just Jane" was repositioned to the same orientation as the overflying Lancasters. | |||
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| I wanted to catch some video, or at least the sound of twelve Merlins during the event, so made a wooden bracket for my cameras. The small compact camera that would be used for video was screwed to a plywood plate via the tripod fitting, and this ply plate was fixed to the DSLR by its tripod screw thread. The video would be recorded upside down, but that would be rotated in processing. The two cameras were aligned so that where ever the DSLR was pointing, the video camera was pointing the same direction. So long as I had the Lancs in the DSLR viewfinder, I would catch them on video. That video can be seen below. |
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After the Lancasters display finished, "Just Jane" did a few more passes up and down the crowd line to finish the day. As well as shooting video and with the DSLR, I did manage to see the two Lancs with my own eyes too. It was a strange, almost unreal sight, after only seeing one Lancaster in the sky for so many years! |
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