King's Flypast

[ffutures]

On Saturday I went to a car boot sale (and failed to find anything I wanted to buy) then caught the tube to Waterloo to take pictures of the flypast for the Trooping of the Colour at 1 PM. Got there about 12.30 and was surprised to find a much smaller crowd than for the last two big flypasts, for the 100th anniversary of the RAF and the Queen's 70th year on the throne. Not entirely surprising in hindsight, since I think it has a lot less publicity and is the usual yearly thing rather than a really special one, apart from being the first for the king. I had no trouble finding a good spot on Waterloo bridge and didn't feel incredibly crowded at any point - last time there was barely room to swing a camera.

Weather was hot with very slight cloud, and for some reason my camera seemed to have a lot of trouble with autofocus, which I think may be down to slight heat haze, I'm really not sure. I ended up using manual focus. For that reason I don't think they're as clear as last time, though not as bad as I feared when I was struggling with the camera. Lots of examples behind the cut, and a load more on flickr































See this album for the rest

https://www.flickr.com/photos/150868539@N02/albums/72177720309139248/page1

I haven't named all the planes in the Flickr tabs yet, there's a key to the order of the flypast here:

https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/RAF-flypast-details.jpg

I'll get it done sooner or later.

Comments

[eledonecirrhosa]

Ooh those are very cool. I like the CR formation. And the coloured smoke looks awesome.

[ffutures]

The CR was a nice touch - the same planes flew in a 70-shaped formation for the Queen's last jubilee and in a 100-shaped formation for the RAF's 100th anniversary. The planes with the smoke trails are the Red Arrows, the RAF display flight, that's a staple of these flypasts.