Friday 21 April 2017

Lakenheath - F-35 workout

I had Lakenheath on my mind today... The journey home would naturally take me past there and for some reason, my mind wandered off topic - what was likely to be happening at the US airbase?  I googled 'Lakenheath  US fighters jets'... Aviation is a rare 'day off' for me and any US fighters would be new for me and boy did I get a surprise! Six of the new F-35A stealth fighters had flown in this week to get ready for NATO drills - crikey, that's the next few hours planned! Birds were about to take a back seat today...

Waiting F-15s were laying down a heat haze over the first to emerge...


 Wow, my lucky day!








Pretty (awesome) planes all in a row!


Then there were two!



Make that three! A mere c £300,000,000 worth of ultimate high technology on show (not counting the F-15)





Eventually, there were four waiting to take off and in a cacophony of noise, they were off...




Clearly needing more runway to get airborne than the F-15s




And then off!



I was using 700mm of lens and that was to be my undoing during the close approaches but at least I could get some half decent record shots banking, wing tips laying down a vapour trail. The circular vortices can just about be seen here :-)


A bit closer...











And moments later they were gone!


Eventually, two  reappeared with two Eagles (and not a white tailed in sight!)...


Landing or not, this was where the action got too close!






Tucking away the landing gear....


For an overshoot or two!







Finally they came down for a (full frame) landing!







Shame about the light and white sky but I learnt a lot today. First time here - lots of wrong lens/wrong place going on!  But it was never planned and what a fantastic experience! The shorter zoom lens will have to be packed for future visits to Norfolk!! 100-400mm would have been ideal at times today...

Now then, 100's of F-15 images waiting to be looked at??!!