Acting on A: a hunch, and B: info from the mairie, I decided to plonk myself on ‘my’ hill in an attempt to photograph the RAFALE jet or jets overflying the Cathedrale in Auch.
This has become an almost regular occurence as the jets, based at Mont de Marsan, make their way up to Paris for the 14th July celebrations and Auch is on their way so they make a low pass over the city.
It was warm last Sunday, and I was prepared…
Camera on monpod, hat on head – what could go wrong?
For the technically minded, this was the camera setup
The flypast was scheduled for 11h30 – in the past the timing has been anything but vague – true military precision. However, by 11h45 I was beginning to get a little concerned. My camera was sending me messages about a ‘hot card’ (relating to the temperature of the memory card) which wasn’t too surprising considering I had no shade and the camera body is black…
I had set the ‘rafale’ mode at 15 frames per second so as not to worry about missing the airplane – these things move so damn fast – and interestingly the ‘hot card’ (I later discovered) was more a warning that the fps setting wouldn’t be maintained as the card didn’t have a sufficiently high write speed…
In any event, the jets did not manifest themselves, and all I managed was a light plane (a Robin DR-400) towing a glider (a Schleicher ASH-25)
Interesting but not what I was there for.
When I arrived home we prepared lunch, and at 12h45 a single RAFALE roared over Auch on it’s way north… glad I didn’t wait!