Art Installation

Wimpole Hall had at least four installations - Black, White, Rose and Yellow.  The last was the most interesting in placement and colour.

Airliners

From top: d.H. Dove; Vickers Viscount; RR Tyne turboprop in Viscount; HS 125 engine.

Rust and Patches

From the top: Phantom; Vampire; Thud; Voodoo.  All in 'cold tone' except the Thud tailplane.  

Wrecks

From the Midland Air Museum.  Top down: Phantom; Sea Vixen; Thud; Gannet.

Midland Air Museum

The museum is next to Coventry Airport and has the usual collection of Cold War aircraft plus the Whittle Jet Centre.  Additionally it has an Armstrong-Whitworth Argosy and a Boulton-Paul P. 111 research aircraft.  Access to the cockpits and information from the friendly volunteers was unrivalled - this is how an aircraft museum should be.  The lemon drizzle cake and coffee were also superb and served with a smile.  Cockpits from top: Gloster Meteor (cramped, with black consoles making the switches hard to see); Lockheed Elektra airliner; Argosy (very spacious with excellent visibility); Vulcan bomber (who needs to see out?); Mil-24 Russian helicopter (the cockpit is the upper bubble in the pic of the outside).  

Wicken Fen RPS Day

Ann was helping to run a day at the Fen, and I sat in both Mere Hides without seeing much that I or my CCC friends could photograph (apart from geese) so after lunch we settled in the Boardwalk Hide overlooking Sedge Fen to wait for the Hen Harriers to come in to roost.  The interval was made more exciting by three Barn Owls hunting the Fen, and by the time the harriers arrived (the first three were female, the fourth a male) my camera was on ISO 5000 and the shutter speed with 400mm + 1.4x converter was down to 1/400th, but the autofocus coped well in the gloom.