Civilian Aviation

here are a few shots from my long awaited weekend at Heathrow, sadly the weather did not play ball and saturday and sunday turned out to be over cast with heavy cloud cover so not great for pictures

after lunch at White waltham we arrived at our hotel on Bath road at around 16.00 hrs friday so i grabbed the camera and took a few shots from the hotel car park

415A3729 by machone photos, on Flickr

415A3733 by machone photos, on Flickr

415A3700 by machone photos, on Flickr


three shots in the best light of the weekend

saturday i went to Hatton Cross for some pictures at Myrtle Ave but it was freezing with intermittent showers and washed out skies so the shots i got looked like this

740A6700 by machone photos, on Flickr

740A6748 by machone photos, on Flickr

so at around midday just after the Qatar A380 i left the field and went to seek some shelter and a warm, i ventured over to the Esso garage on the south perimeter road for the runway change at 15.00 but again washed out skies rain showers and cold wind meant i didn't stay long, but i did get to see G-XLEJ depart while i was over there, on the bus back to the hotel i spotted what must have been the only break in the cloud and a little bit of blue sky so i got off the bus and walked back to the entrance to snow base but it seemed to be nothing but BA and short haul stuff

740A6838 by machone photos, on Flickr

sunday i was up at 7.00am and the forecast looked better and by 8.00am the winter sun was shining but it was very short lived and by 9.00am it was gone and the clouds rolled in but i tried to make the most of myrtle ave

415A3878 by machone photos, on Flickr

415A3787 by machone photos, on Flickr

all in all a very enjoyable weekend but at times the photography was frustrating< i will add a few more shots later

Thanks for looking C & C welcome

British airways A380 fleet

sunday 10.51am G-XLEA

415A3803 by machone photos, on Flickr

at around 02.30pm G-XLEJ came in and got us talking about the newest on the Fleet, so a quick search on flight radar showed G-XLEK heading for south wales for a 03.15pm arrival as we were at hatton cross we were on the wrong runway so a quick dash for the bus and a trip to harlington corner and a walk down to the premier inn where my car was parked and i arrived with minutes to spare

Sunday 03.13pm G-XLEK

740A6929 by machone photos, on Flickr

I am happy that i got to see the newest A380 during my visit

Nice shots considering the weather

Finally A selection of the Dreamliners that i saw over the weekend

740A6723-D by machone photos, on Flickr

415A3762-D by machone photos, on Flickr

415A3769-D by machone photos, on Flickr

415A3837-D by machone photos, on Flickr

415A3821-D by machone photos, on Flickr

Nice pics but the weather really made you work hard for them. Such a shame after your long journey but you obviously planned your trip well and worked out the photo points and that paid off with the iffy conditions - well done, it shows how important that is.

thanks for posting them

andy

Cheers andy, saturday was a complete wash out and the camera spent most of the day in the bag because there really was no point in taking pictures, the Qatar A380 really shows the extent of the cloud cover and the dull grey colour, to get the plane somewhere near correctly exposed you were completely overexposing the skies, if you checked the exposure using the blinkies most of the screen was coming up black

it is just a real shame that the weather actually turned out worse than forecast, but we still had a good crack and an enjoyable few days away

lets hope for better weather when i go back next which will hopefully be sooner rather than later

Great pics, enjoyed seeing them.

fanjet47 wrote:Great pics, enjoyed seeing them.

AlanP wrote:Nice shots considering the weather

Thanks for the comments