Air to Air with the 48th Fighter Wing
Having twice tried and failed to fly with aircraft based at Lakenheath, this was the third attempt. Thankfully it proved lucky. It meant that I would need to make my way across the country to North Wales to meet up with the team from COAP in our hotel in Caernarfon.
Having arrived two days before my scheduled flight I took the opportunity to explore and visit RAF Valley for the first time, you can read more about that visit here. The air to air flights had been planned to co-incide with the station’s Family day.
During the afternoon I met the team to re-acquaint myself with the photoship, Cessna 208 G-EELS, and the set up during the flight. Unlike the Skyvan, you only have a side on view and some opportunities can be limited depending on the position you sit in, for instance if you are sat in the doorway to the left you won’t be able to capture the target approaching, but you will capture it when it is in front of the photoship.
The evening before the flight news came through that we would have just one plane from Lakenheath, it had been hoped that the specially painted ‘Karma 52’ F-15E would be joining up with us, sadly the jet had gone Tech. However we were getting an Eagle from the 492d Bolars.
Our flight was planned for the afternoon, so we waited, harnessed up for the call to go. When you prepare for a photoflight, you do tend to need to wear warm clothing as the temperature over 4000 feet can be quite chilly. However this was the middle of the warmest summer in memory, so to sit around wearing thermals was a tad uncomfortable.
The shout to depart came and we made our way airside, found our positions onboard and departed Caernarfon to meet up with our target somewhere over the coast of North Wales.
Conditions were almost perfect, though there was a level of haze that we ended up flying through as the Eagle came alongside us. Our pilots did their upmost to keep us alongside the grey beast, however our plane at it’s fastest speed couldn’t really keep up with an Eagle flying on the limit of it’s low end performance, I mean they aren’t designed to hang around after all!
I managed to get some excellent shots and caught some of the action on my Meta glasses, for all the talk of their miss-use, they are excellent for photography, especially on photo missions.
All too quickly, the Eagle departed and headed for the Loop. By the time we had landed back at Caernarfon posts of the plane had appeared on Facebook! Which still makes me chuckle as we all had to wait a few weeks for the USAF to give us permission to publish, thankfully they did.
As always thanks to the team from Lakenheath for finally making this bucket list wish come true!
