As normal, March sees the spring edition of the RAF Northolt Nightshoot.
Held on the crisp, cool, slightly blustery evening of March 7th 2024, the 30th event of its kind, once again gave us photographers the opportunity to capture images ‘under the lights’.
The turnout of people was the largest it has ever been, with nearly 300 in attendance. As usual, everyone tried to be considerate of others when capturing long exposures. The occasional stronger gusts of wind did cause me some issues with tripod movement but I quickly learnt to use my adequate girth to provide some sort of windbreak (along with others I might add – no names, no pack drill).
From an airframe point of view, it was great to see one of the Westland Sea King HU.5’s of HeliOperations on show, along with a Lockheed P-3C Orion of the Marineflieger (German Navy). The P-3 fleet is being retired and has been sold to Portugal, so it was a great last-chance opportunity.
The Irish Air Corps turned up in strength, with one of their newer CASA 295 MPA Pursuaders, a Pilatus PC-12/47E in a special scheme and a Eurocopter EC-135-P2+ sporting a nice rendition of the Pink panther on the tail boom.
The French Armee de l’air provided 2 x Pilatus PC-21 and a very nice Embraer 121A Xingu in a 40th Anniversary scheme.
The Royal Navy sent an EH Industries EH.101 Merlin HC.3i and there was a privately owned Scottish Aviation SA.120 Bulldog T.1 still resplendent in its original RAF colour scheme, looking very pretty.
Lastly, 70 Squadron of the RAF deployed an Airbus Industrie A400M Atlas C.1 on a short stop during night training, arriving late in the evening and departing just after we had left.
A new level of access was provided by the team at RAF Northolt, whereby we were escorted out to the second and third lines of aircraft, to get close-up shots and some more unusual angles (see my A400M image below) – this worked quite well, although the narrow lane of entry and exit did make it slightly more difficult to not get in the way of other people.
My thanks once again to Phil Dawe, Lee Barton, Group Captain Hough (Station Commander) and all the team of volunteers and RAF personnel who help make these events so enjoyable.
Oh and yes, I did remember to switch off VR mode this time!!
Here’s to event 31 in October.
