Lotsa photos from FRA (total 2,42mb)

By: tenthije - 22nd February 2005 at 20:33 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

Friday was spent at the museums of Speyer and Sinsheim (seperate thread) so fast forward to Saturday. The first day of the airliners.net spotters meet, so I had to spend the day at the observation deck to meet and greet.

The observation deck has its charme, but is not that good for photography. Most of the day you are looking into the sun which makes photography hard. Only 6 or 7 gates are lit properly.

Weather was terrible with lots of snow.

Saturday 19/02/05
1) B747 Lufthansa
2) A340 Lufthansa, note the green wings from the de-icing.
3) B747 Lufthansa, de-icing is done at the gates in FRA.
4) B747 Lufthansa, de-icing complete it is now pushed away from the gate.
5) A340 China Airlines. Nice looking plane!
6) C-5 Galaxy at full reverse on a snow covered runway! Unfortunately the far away runway so the photo is not that sharp as well as a tad dark. I really hope this can be saved for Jetphotos.net.
7) B747 United Airlines, my first good photo from a UA 747.
8) Note that wake this thing has! :diablo:
9) Yak42... euh... well.... the airline is Russian. :)
10) Varig reversing on the same runway as the C-5.

By: tenthije - 22nd February 2005 at 20:42 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

Sunday some of us decided to take the ramp-tour. Waste of time!!! The planes where almost without exception blocked by more ramp rats then I've ever seen before. And when the announcer said that this Vietnam Airlines plane had the prettiest livery at FRA, we all got hopefull the bus would make a nice circle around it for the photogs. Unfortunately not so, the bus raced by.

Credits to the announcer though, cause this is the first ramp tour I did where the announcer knew his plane types!

Sunday 20/02/05
1) A330 Lufthansa (ramp tour)
2) MD11 Varig - star alliance
3) B777 Vietnam Airlines. The ramp tour offered no good views, so with the full 300mm my lense has this shot was made from the perimeter.
4) F100 Montenegro Airlines.
5) B747 ANA
6) MD11 Lufthansa Cargo
7) Speeding over the A3, nice way to practise panning with low shutter time.
8) A340 LAN - great livery, although it was already turning darker.
9) BAe146 - Albanian Airlines
10) A330 LTU (ramp tour)

By: tenthije - 22nd February 2005 at 20:50 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

Last day of my trip, and I have 16 photos for you. At the beginning of the day the weather was great, and I got some very nice photos for you. Especially the second C17 turned out really sharp. You may definately expect that one at Jetphotos.net shortly, perhaps I will even try Airliners.net again.

Monday 21/02/05
1) C17 USAF
2) A340 Gulf Air - new livery
3) L1011 ATA, ferrying troops to the US Air Base. I also saw a 753, but did not get a photo of it.
4) E135 Savoie
5) B747 Lufthansa, star alliance
6) very cool global express
7) B747 lufthansa
8) B777 American, can't get enough of that bare metal livery! AA should start flying to AMS! :D
9) Grosse Bruder wacht uber uns!
10) A330 Northwest

By: tenthije - 22nd February 2005 at 21:00 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

This day was a funny day anyways.

At a roundabout a took a wrong turn, and ended up on the driveway to the USAF base. I put the car in the reverse and tried to gently drive off. Then this soldier dressed in all black (uniform, balaclave, barret) came shouting at me that I should drive to him.

Well, when someone with a machine gun asks me something, I tend to be very flexible so I approached him. Rolled down the window and said "I seem to be a tad lost". He shouted (remember US military) back that: "You may not reverse here SIR, you may cause an accident SIR!" He instructed me to drive through the gate and turn around there and get out of there.

So I drove on where I met another 2 soldiers that looked very surprised at seeing me. Wonder why?

Bare in mind that tomorrow the US president will visit FRA! Security at the air base and in FRA in general was very strict and all day at the spotter site there was one or more police vehicles to keep check of us. For a few minutes I even spotted one soldier (black barret too) who tried to hide his presence. Not that good a job really.

First time I had my indentity checked too.

Anyway, back to the last few photos.

21/02/05
11) A340 China Airlines
12) C17 USAF
13) B767 Uzbekistan, long time no see. They stopped flying to AMS 3 or 4 years ago.
14) A319 Iberia, note that Iberia closed the MIA hub and sent the A319s back to Europe. My first sighting of one.
15) B732 Lithuanian, very nice to see this oldy. Might well be my last one ever in Europe considering the ever increasing noise regulations.
16) Training for the worst.

This is the last batch.

By: tenthije - 23rd February 2005 at 18:28 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

Are you sure it was an ex MIA based A319 as Iberia have recently taken delivery of at kleast 1 brand new A319 which never went to MIA.

Did not know that, so it might have been brand new. Still, nice to see an IB A319 in Europe.